And The Dead Shall Rise by Steve Oney, The Murder of Mary Phagan and Lynching of Leo Frank

AND THE

DEAD
HALL RISE

The Murder of Mary Phagan
and the Lynching of Leo Frank

STEVE ONEY

PANTHEON BOOKS, NEW YORK

To Madeline Stuart,
who believed in me

"When we dream about those who are long since forgotten
or dead, it is a sign that we have undergone a radical trans-
formation and that the ground on which we live has been
completely dug up: then the dead rise up, and our antiq-
uity becomes modernity."

— FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE,

Mixed Opinions and Maxims

Contents

i. April 26, 1913

3

2. Look Out, White Folks

18

3. Extra, Extra

35

4. Onward, Christian Soldiers

46

5. A Good Name, A Bad Reputation

7i

6. Skulduggery

9i

7. A Clean Nigger

118

8. A Tramp Alumnus

145

9. Skirmishes

162

10. Prosecution

190

11. Defense

261

12. Verdict

306

13. Appeals in and out of Court

345

14. Brightness Visible

37i

15. Darkness Falls

397

16. A Change of Heart

423

17. Cause Celebre

444

18. Commutation

469

19. Marietta

513

20. Milledgeville

529

2 1 . The Lynching of Leo Frank

56i

22. Burial

573

23. Recessional

596

24. The Revenant

630

Epilogue

644

Notes

651

Bibliography

709

Acknowledgments

713

Index

717

AND THE

HALL RISE

ONE

That morning, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan, after eating a break-
fast of cabbage and wheat biscuits, devoted herself to getting
dressed. First, she donned stockings and garters, then a store-
bought violet dress and gunmetal-gray pumps. Two bows in her auburn hair
and a blue straw hat adorned with dried red flowers atop her head com-
pleted the outfit. Mary wanted to look nice, for Saturday, April 26, 1913,
marked a special occasion— Confederate Memorial Day. Around 11:45,
with a silvery mesh purse and an umbrella (the skies were misting rain) in
her hands, she boarded the English Avenue trolley headed to downtown
Atlanta, where the annual parade would soon begin.

Well turned out or not, Mary would have been one of the prettiest girls
in any crowd. Eyes blue as cornflowers, cheeks high-boned and rosy, smile
beguiling as honeysuckle, figure busty (later, everyone acknowledged that
"she was exceedingly well-developed for her age"), she had undoubtedly
already tortured many a boy. There was simply something about her— a tilt
to the chin, a dare in the gaze— that projected those flirtatious wiles that
Southern girls often employ to devastating effect.

As her correspondence with her country cousin and friend Myrtle Bar-
more illustrates, Mary could be a handful. On December 30, 1912, she
wrote:

Well, Myrt I don't know what to think of you for not coming [to lunch on
Christmas day]. I think that was a poor excuse. When I come up there I'll
give you what you need. Me and OUie [her sister] & Mama & Charles
& Joshua [her brothers] went out at Uncle Jack Thurs. and taken dinner.
"But gee" how we did eat. Had fresh "hog." I don't know when I can get
to come. Mama is getting where she will not let me go anywhere. "But
gee" I am going to save my money and go West. Gee I will have some
time . . . When I come there, we will have some time "kid."

Yet despite her beauty and airy hopes (many inspired by the movies,
which she attended frequently and followed in such magazines as Photo

4 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Lore), Mary Phagan was unlikely to escape drab and impoverished envi-
rons. She lived in Atlanta's Bellwood section, no one's vision of a beautiful
wood. Northwest of downtown, the neighborhood was bordered on one
side by the Exposition Cotton Mill and its adjacent factory-owned village,
Happy Hollow, on another by the clanging sheds of the Atlantic Steel Mill
and on a third by an expanse of crookedly carpentered "nigger shacks." In
homage to its bare-knuckled ward politics, the community was called "the
bloody fifth."

Like most Bellwood people, Mary was a hillbilly. Her father, a farmer
named William Joshua Phagan, had died of the measles in 1899 a few
months before her birth in Alabama. Around 1900, Mary's widowed
mother, Fannie, carried the children back to the family's ancestral home
near Marietta in Cobb County, twenty miles northwest of Atlanta.

At one time, Phagan had been a fine name around Marietta. During the
1 890s, the patriarch— William Jackson— had stood in the traces behind his
own mules on his own land snug against the Blue Ridge mountains that rim
Cobb County. But the old man had accompanied his son to Alabama, and
after the boy's death, there he remained. When Fannie Phagan and her
brood returned to Georgia, they moved in with her people, the Bentons, in
the Sardis section, a rural area several miles outside Marietta.

In 1907, the family relocated again— this time to the dingy mill town of
Eagan, a tiny place encysted in the southern Atlanta suburb of East Point.
There, the widow Phagan opened a boardinghouse.The clan didn't move to
Georgia's capital until 1912, when Fannie remarried. Her new husband,
John W. Coleman, toiled intermittently at the Exposition mill but was
presently employed by the municipal sanitation department.

That, down deep, Mary Phagan cleaved tight to her struggling family can
be seen in the lines of a poem entitled "My Pa," which she'd recently copied
from Successful Farmer magazine and presented to her stepfather:

My pa ain't no millyunaire, but, Gee! He's offul smart!

He ain f t no carpenter, but he can fix a feller's cart . . .

My pa ain't president becoz, he says, he never run,

But he could do as well as any president has done . . .

My pa ain't rich, but that's becoz he never tried to be;

He ain't no 'lectrician, but one day he fixed the

telephone for me . . .

My pa knows everything, I guess, an ' you bet I don 't care

'Coz he ain't president or rich as any millyunaire!

Whenever things go wrong, my pa can make 'em right, you see;

An' if he ain't rich or president, my pa's good enough fer me!

APRIL 26, I913 5

Like many girls her age, Mary had quit school to help out at home. In
1909, at the age of ten, she'd hired on part-time at a textile mill. In 191 1,
she'd taken a steady job at a paper manufacturer. In 1912, she'd moved to
her current position at the National Pencil Factory, where she was paid ten
cents an hour to run an apparatus called a knurling machine that inserted
rubber erasers into the metal tips of nearly finished pencils.

Tough as times had been for the Phagans, the family was no worse off
than most Atlantans in the early twentieth century. During these years,
refugees from Georgia's hardscrabble tenant farms poured into the city,
driven from the flatlands by the fluctuating price of cotton, from Appa-
lachia by a rocky soil unkind to seed and plow. Figures compiled by the
United States Census Bureau show that between 1900 and 1910 Atlanta
nearly doubled in size. Many of the new arrivals toiled in the mills, chief
among them the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill, whose factory-owned village,
Cabbagetown, spread out in row after identical clapboard row east of
downtown. For these thousands of souls, the average workweek lasted 66
hours, and pay fell 37 percent below that earned by northern workers. In a
city whose cost of living was exceeded among other American cities only by
Boston's, a wage of ten or fifteen cents an hour did not go far. In 191 1,
Atlanta's Journal of Labor reported four thousand requests for assistance;
in 1912, five thousand.

There were other problems as well. Over half of Atlanta's school chil-
dren—both white and Negro— suffered from anemia, enlarged glands, heart
disease or malnutrition. Death rates were abnormally high for citizens of all
ages. (In 1905, 2,414 of every 100,000 Atlantans died; the national average
was 1,637.) And there wasn't much indication that things would get better
soon. More than 50,000 Atlantans lived with no plumbing. To service its
10,800 "earth closets," as the newspapers called them, the city provided just
fifteen horse-drawn honey wagons. Moreover, the capital's physicians pos-
sessed no means of isolating and then combating infections, as Georgia was
among only a handful of states yet to set up a department of vital statistics.

Nonetheless, Atlanta's crackers— as country folk come to town were
known generally— and its lintheads— as millworkers were known spe-
cifically—did not spend their time in despair. On April 1, they'd staged
their own musicale— the first annual Atlanta Fiddler's Convention— at the
Municipal Auditorium. The master of ceremonies was Colonel Max Poole, a
one-armed Confederate veteran from Oxford, Georgia, who played by
cradling a bow under his stub, while the featured performer was Fiddlin'
John Carson, a Cabbagetown resident and future RCA recording star who
toted his 17 14 Stradivarius reproduction in a feed sack. The Scotch-Irish
reels the fiddlers favored— "Trail of the Lonesome Pine," "Annie Laurie,"

6 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"Hop Light, Ladies"— could sure enough move a crowd. By closing night of
the three-day festival, Momma and 'em were clogging in the aisles.

The spirit of Atlanta's crackers was independent to the point of contrari-
ness and a little bit hellish. No matter how bad things got, folks weren't
likely to complain unless, of course, their dignity was threatened, which was
exactly what the city's industrialists, by relying increasingly on child labor-
ers, were now doing.

Rarely, if ever, had Atlantans been as conscious of the difficult lives to
which so many of their children had been reduced as on April 26, 19 13.
thinks Georgia treats little toilers worst, declared the headline in
the afternoon's Atlanta Georgian over an article pointing out that "Georgia
is the only state that allows children ten years old to labor eleven hours a
day in the mills and factories, and is worse in that respect than North Car-
olina, where the age limit is twelve years." Even more damning, the piece
detailed how just a few months earlier a group of Georgia factory owners
had banded together to kill a bill in the state senate that would have raised
the legal working age to fourteen.

The Georgian's story was but the latest in a series of attacks by the news-
paper on exploitative factory owners. William Randolph Hearst, its pub-
lisher since he purchased the sheet a year before, had pursued the issue
relentlessly. His campaign, while intended to win readers, was not entirely
disingenuous. The press baron's wife, Millicent, was obsessed with the "little
girl in the mill town [who] is not receiving a living wage." And his chief
correspondent and ponderous moral conscience, Arthur Brisbane, was a
fanatic on the subject. Earlier in the spring, Brisbane had filed a long, prob-
ably apocryphal piece about a Georgia mill owner so depraved that he
refused to release his employees during daylight to attend the burial of one
of their tiny coworkers. Entitled "A Funeral by Lamplight," the story was
set in "a squalid room at midnight," where "a coffin rests on trestles" and
children in "all stages of emaciation" moaned and sobbed.

Hearst was not alone in calling attention to the plight of Atlanta's under-
age workforce. Elsewhere in the city on this spring Saturday, others were
speaking out just as forcefully. During a Confederate Memorial Day ser-
mon delivered at the downtown Oakland Cemetery, Dr. Charles Lee, a first
cousin of General Robert E. Lee, stood on a platform at the base of the
Sleeping Lion, the Confederacy's Tomb of the Unknown, and told a rain-
soaked audience of a thousand:

Our principles were not defeated when we surrendered at Appomattox.
The wars are not over. There are other enemies, bitter ones, that must
be fought— emigration, labor, the double standard of child labor and
white slavery. Our fathers would face these and defeat them had they the

APRIL 26, I9I3 7

youth and vitality that was once theirs, and it behooves us to do it for their
sake, if nothing else.

Meantime across town at the Wesley Chapel, the Southern Sociological
Conference was convening. Among the convocation's goals was the formu-
lation of tactics to put an end to "the awful curse" of child labor. Attended
by some one thousand educators, pastors and social workers (many of them
Negro), the affair was chaired by Alexander J. McKelway, regional secre-
tary of the National Child Labor Committee, an organization best known as
the sponsor of the photographer Lewis Hine, whose portraits of begrimed
little coal miners and millworkers had alerted America to the Dickensian
dilemma of its urchin wage earners.

The three-day Atlanta assembly was not devoted solely to the topic of
child labor. Also on the agenda were such subjects as "Race Problems" and
"Organized Charities." In fact, the convention was something of a referen-
dum on the myriad problems affecting the city's poor. Yet in the end, the
fiercest stir was created by the remarks of Owen R. Lovejoy, general secre-
tary of the National Child Labor Committee, who promised the multitude:
" 'Thy Kingdom come' means the coming of the day when child labor will
be done away with, when every little tot shall have its quota of sunlight and
happiness."

How this vision could be realized was a subject of great debate. Ideas
involving everything from labor unions to legislation, and ranging from the
Utopian to the revolutionary, vied for attention. At the radical end of the
spectrum could be heard alarming notions inspired by the fact that many
of Atlanta's factories, among them the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill, were
Jewish-owned. At first such talk was discouraged. In fact, when Dr. Edwin
M. Poteat, the president of the Baptist-endowed Furman University in
Greenville, South Carolina, began to denounce Jews for their purported
crimes against workers, Alexander McKelway cut him off in mid-diatribe.
But Poteat literally walked his text over to the Baptist Tabernacle. There,
after telling a packed house that "in America today, the immediate conflict
is between the bosses and the people," he lit into the faith that he believed
had produced a disproportionate share of the oppressors. "The Jewish race
lost its divine commission when it rejected Jesus as the Saviour," he thun-
dered. "Up to that time, it had been the leader in religion. Every great idea
contributed to the thought of the world came from the Jews. In fact, the
Jews were chosen of God, but they rejected the stone that is the keystone
of the arch." Then, for good measure, Poteat flayed the Catholics: "The
Catholic church has no place in America. The priest is 2,000 years out of
date. The nation cannot and will not submit to the encroachments of the
despot, even in religion."

8 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Considering the many outcries on the topic of child labor, one Georgian
was conspicuously silent on April 26, 1913. In his heyday, Thomas E.Watson
had been the state's most relentless advocate for the workingman, leading a
quarter-century-long campaign against the forces of rapacious capitalism.
To "The Sage of McDuffle County," factories were the "soulless" locus of
modern evil, dynamos studded by "a hundred dull red eyes, indicative of the
flames within which were consuming the men, women, and children, the
atrocious sacrifice to an insatiable god!"

Rail-thin, redheaded and possessed of galvanizing rhetorical skill, Wat-
son was equal parts stem-winding stump speaker, defense lawyer, poet,
popular historian, sentimental defender of the Old South and seer of an
unlikely New South. Early on, he had divined that the strangest but truest
allies in the region were poor white farmers and Negroes, and with these
groups— each victimized by Dixie's elites— as his constituency, he had
ascended to the United States Congress.

But since the mid- 1890s, when leaders of a rival political faction stuffed
the ballot box to deny him reelection to the House of Representatives from
Georgia's predominantly rural tenth district, Watson had been in decline.
His troubles had increased in 1896 after the Populist Party's national
ticket— William Jennings Bryan for president, Watson for vice president—
went down to defeat. By the early 1900s, the self-proclaimed friend of "Old
Man Peepul" had abandoned his black supporters and become, after his
own overwrought fashion, a muckraker, pillorying "the Standard Oil
crowd" and various sleek plutocrats and plunderers in the pages of Tom
Watson's Magazine. Eventually, these targets proved unsatisfying, and in
the teens, the agrarian rebel focused his guns on the insidious foreigner
behind it all. Week after week in a new publication, the Jeffersonian, he
explored innovative ways to excoriate that "fat old dago" who cohabited
with "voluptuous women"— the Pope.

Ultimately, the United States government indicted Watson for violating
postal laws against sending obscenity through the mail. His trial was sched-
uled to begin in May. While he retained power as a behind-the-scenes king-
maker, in terms of his own electability he was, as he put it, "in the Valley of
the Shadow," and friends and critics alike speculated as to his mental stabil-
ity. He no longer seemed capable of mustering the initiative to take on gen-
uine far-ranging injustice. "Your Uncle T.E.W.," as Watson often referred
to himself in print, simply wasn't there for his poor little nieces, Atlanta's
factory girls.

Due to a shortage of sheet brass at the pencil factory, the week ending April
26, 1913, had not been a good one for Mary Phagan. Ordinarily, she was

APRIL 26, I913 9

scheduled to work fifty-five hours. During the past six days, however, she'd
been needed only for two abbreviated shifts. The sealed envelope awaiting
her in her employer's office safe contained just $1.20. Still, it was some-
thing, which was why after she got off her trolley in downtown Atlanta, she
walked not to Peachtree Street, where the parade was forming, but to 37
South Forsyth Street, where she worked.

The building that housed the National Pencil Company was four stories
in height, a full city block in length. Situated just below a ribbon of railroad
tracks that formed an unofficial border between Atlanta's commercial and
industrial districts, the place bore scant resemblance to the squat brick and
frame constructions surrounding it. Banner Sheet Metal, Southern Belting,
Keystone Type Foundry, Schenck Brothers Machine Shop and the local
John Deere distributor were all of a piece, drab and close to the ground.
Only this bulky interloper a door up from the northwest corner of Forsyth
and Hunter broke the pattern.

Yet what ultimately set the old Venable Building— so named for its orig-
inal owners— apart was its architecture. Granite facade dominated by a
series of somber arches that repeated themselves on each succeeding floor,
main entry topped by a fan-shaped brass transom bearing a bas-relief
image of the sun, upper levels punctuated by clusters of sash windows that
seemed to glower from beneath beetling stone brows, the structure was a
passable example of the ponderous style that had flourished throughout
New England during the gilded age: Richardsonian Romanesque. Initially
operated as a hotel— the Granite Hotel, logically enough— the edifice had
been designed to dignify. Instead, it intimidated. Around noon, Mary Pha-
gan went inside.

Twenty-nine-year-old Leo Max Frank, the superintendent of the National
Pencil Company, had spent most of the morning of April 26, 1913, in his fac-
tory office working on the books. Saturdays were invariably the same for
him: triplicate invoices on each job (white sheet to the purchaser, pink to
the majority stockholder for serial recording, yellow to the alphabetical
file), lading bills, commission forms for the salesmen and distributing
agents, and a financial report balancing the costs of labor, machinery and
materials (lead, wood, rubber, paint) against earnings.

In spite of the sheet-brass shortage, it had been a busy week at the
National Pencil Company. Though output had been depressed— 2,719^
gross of new pencils— inventory had more than met demand, enabling the
factory to dispatch 4,374 gross of pencils to the freight yards, most destined
for the shelves of such five-and-dime stores as F. W. Woolworth and S. H.
Kress, others special-ordered and headed to such coveted customers as

10 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"Cadillac" and "Packard." This embarrassment of pencils had generated an
avalanche of paperwork, all of it landing on the factory superintendent's
desk.

Leo Frank was not an ugly man, but he was quite decidedly no blandly
handsome Georgia boy. It wasn't hard to see his delicate, small-boned, dis-
tinctly Hebraic face as the flesh-and-blood articulation of a mechanical
drawing— jaw long and angular, chin sharply squared off, nose a drafts-
man's triangle rising from elliptical cheeks. His features, however, were not
pure geometry. Full-lipped and sensual, his mouth was too pretty. His eyes,
magnified by thick-lensed wire-rimmed spectacles, bulged perceptibly. At
five feet six inches and 120 pounds, he appeared just the sort to relish the
task of tabulating figures. And he did— yet not only for the work's sake. By
applying "scientific methods" to the manufacturing of pencils, he was
ascending to the top of Atlanta's German-Jewish aristocracy.

Since arriving in Georgia nearly five years earlier, Frank had enjoyed a
propitious rise. The Texas-born, Brooklyn-reared factory superintendent
was the product of good German- Jewish stock. His recently retired father,
Rudolph, though he made his living in the new world as a salesman, had
trained in Dusseldorf as a physician. His mother, Rae (short for Rachel),
had stayed at home raising Leo and his younger sister, Marian. Mean-
time, his uncle— Confederate veteran Moses Frank— was a globe-trotting
Atlanta-based magnate who owned a substantial percentage of National
Pencil Company stock and whose address was generally the best hotel in
whatever city he was visiting. Young Frank did not, however, owe his posi-
tion solely to this influential patron. Well educated— drafting studies at
Pratt Institute, an engineering degree from Cornell University— Leo had
apprenticed with two northern concerns: B. F. Sturtevant in Hyde Park,
Massachusetts, and the National Meter Company in New York. He had also
traveled to Germany to learn the pencil business at Eberhard-Faber.

More important, Frank had married well. Twenty-three-year-old Lucille
Selig Frank was the granddaughter of Levi Cohen, cofounder of Atlanta's
reform synagogue, the Temple. Emil Selig, Lucille's father, worked for the
family's thriving business— West Disinfecting ("Largest Manufacturer of
Disinfectant in the World," trumpeted the ads). Through his new connec-
tions, Frank had forged relationships with numerous leading lights of the
wandering Southern tribe. One brother-in-law, Alexander E. Marcus, ran a
stylish Atlanta haberdashery, while Lucille's Athens, Georgia, cousins, the
Michael brothers, owned the college town's flagship department store. Even
Leo's lone Christian relative through intermarriage cut an important figure
in the business world. Charles Ursenbach, a Lutheran and Frank's other
brother-in-law, operated the glove and cosmetic concessions at Atlanta's

APRIL 26, I913 II

most fashionable women's clothing salon, J. P. Allen, one of the city's few
importers of Parisian couture.

As the newly elected president of Gate City Lodge No. 144 of the B'Nai
Brith, Frank was among his faith's most visible representatives. With five
hundred members, the chapter sponsored dances, violin and vocal recitals,
and lectures, and in late March, its leaders had pulled off a coup. They had
persuaded their national executive committee to select Atlanta as the site
for the B'Nai Brith's 1914 convention.

Outside of work, Frank's world was one of culture and privilege.
Atlanta's German- Jewish section centered along Washington Street, sev-
eral blocks south of Georgia's impressive domed capitol. It was a leafy old
neighborhood of magnolia trees and pavered sidewalks lined by stone
walls, and its residences— many two-storied and gabled, most embraced by
porches— bespoke substance and poise. While a few of the wealthier sorts
reared here had already moved to fancier purlieus such as Inman Park (a
Frederick Law Olmsted-inspired Victorian subdivision) or Druid Hills (a
verdant enclave of mock-Tudor estates clustered around a new country
club), most of the city's leading Jewish families remained in the section or at
the very least visited once a week to attend services at the Temple on South
Pryor Street or charitable events at the Hebrew Orphans' Home on Geor-
gia Avenue, a Moorish castle whose onion-domed spires rose above the
neighborhood in exotic foreign counterpoint to the slender church steeples
that spiked the sky all around it.

The men and women whose lives were closely tied to the Washington
Street area were an impressive lot. There were, for instance, the Riches, three
of whose sons had founded the eponymous department store that was
Atlanta's preeminent retailer. Then there were the Montags, whose patri-
arch—Mister Sig— not only controlled a majority share of National Pencil
Company stock but owned a paper-manufacturing empire that bore the
family name. Without Joseph Hirsch— a millionaire clothing merchant, city
council member and health care activist— Grady Hospital, the town's first
medical facility to provide reliable service for the indigent, would not have
gotten off the ground. Without Henry Alexander, a young lawyer who filed
the Atlanta Art Association's incorporation documents, the High Museum
would not have come into being. Without Mayer Wolf sheimer, a butcher and
gourmet food purveyor, a tin of caviar would not have been available to the
capital's epicureans. And Oscar Elsas, president of the Fulton Bag and Cot-
ton Mill, employed more people than anyone else in town. Then there was
Victor Hugo Kriegshaber. Proprietor of a construction supply firm and an
officer of the Atlanta Loan & Savings Company, Kriegshaber would soon
assume the presidency of the Chamber of Commerce.

12 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Presiding over this thoroughly assimilated minority was a rabbi who
could well have been called the great assimilator. David Marx had come to
Atlanta in 1895 at the age of twenty-three. When he'd arrived, he discov-
ered a Jewish community that, though well established (according to a
191 1 magazine article, Caroline Haas, daughter of banker Joseph Haas, was
the "first white female child" to enter life in Atlanta), still clung to tradi-
tion. While the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation had been organized in
1867, its directors had heretofore hired only German-born rabbis. With
Marx, a New Orleans native, the capital's Jews finally eschewed the old
ways of the old world. Within five years of his appearance, Marx had abol-
ished the bar mitzvah, ordered the removal of hats in the Temple and
endorsed the Reform Union prayer book. Marx also shed rabbinical garb
in favor of a business suit, repudiated Zionism and inaugurated Sunday
services that outdrew the traditional Friday-evening and Saturday-
morning services combined.

By 1913, not only was Marx's ministry a popular success but the rabbi
was himself a celebrity. Guest columnist for the Atlanta Journal, frequent
speaker in both the statehouse and the pulpits of the capital's churches, he
had even started what would become an Atlanta tradition— ecumenical
Thanksgiving services held at the Temple but conducted by Presbyterian,
Baptist and Unitarian pastors.

The lone segment of the populace that David Marx ignored was com-
prised of the orthodox Jews who had just begun to immigrate to Atlanta.
While the influx of Russians and Poles into the South was but a trickle com-
pared to the floodtide pouring into New York, enough of them had settled
in Georgia's capital to support several synagogues and import customs
that evoked the Gypsy world across the water. As Eli Evans points out in
The Provincials, a study of Southern Jewry: "The Germans . . . shook their
heads at the newcomers— they wore skullcaps in public, spoke in an embar-
rassing language called Yiddish, lived on the poor side of town and trucked
with the Negroes as customers." So while Harry Epstein, the longtime rabbi
of an orthodox congregation, would later scoff, "Marx would have been an
excellent Presbyterian minister; he knew little about the Talmud and they
taught absolutely nothing in the Sunday school," such criticism mattered lit-
tle to the Temple crowd, whose sights were set not on Jerusalem but on
somewhere closer to home. Again according to Evans: "He [Marx] was try-
ing to say to . . . Christian neighbors, 'Look— we're not the kind of Jews you
think we are —we're just like you.' When members of the congregation said,
'He made us proud to be Jews,' they were referring not to pride in the
teachings of Judaism but pride in his acceptance by the gentile community,
which they assumed to represent acceptance for themselves."

APRIL 26, I913 13

Still, there would always be territory from which all Jews— even those
resembling Presbyterians— would be barred, and in Atlanta, the line was
drawn north of Tenth Street and east of the Ansley Park neighborhood at
the front gate of the Piedmont Driving Club. Though the dashing Aaron
Haas— a legendary Confederate blockade runner— was among the club's
founders, by the turn of the century this haughty social preserve had
become a restricted bastion of WASPdom, the exclusive domain of those
Bourbon-cured old families that preferred to hold their high teas and debut
their daughters among their own kind. Hence in 1905, Victor Kriegshaber,
Walter Rich and a few others had formed the Standard Club, which in just
eight years had become the foremost social institution in the Jewish life of
Atlanta. Now, at dusk, the city's Christian peerage repaired to its sanctum,
the Jews to theirs, and Atlanta came to be known— at least to the Jews— as
"a five o'clock town." Yet while Rabbi Marx's followers went their own way
at sunset, during business hours, there was nowhere they could not go, noth-
ing they could not become, for like their gentile counterparts, they prac-
ticed moneyed Atlanta's one true faith: free enterprise.

Whatever the difficulties facing Atlanta's poor, its powerful and wealthy
citizens saw the spring of 1 913 as the moment the city was joining, in the
Journal's words, "the permanent rank of the nation's metropolises." Tower-
ing over Atlanta's skyline was a handful of shining new high-rises. While
some of the structures housed luxurious hostelries such as the Georgian
Terrace and Winecoff, the largest of them— the Hurt, Candler and Grant—
were frankly and beautifully office buildings. Real estate speculators had
become the city's most affluent citizens, men capable of paying $357,000 for
prime commercial lots, as one did on Saturday, April 26, then crowing that
such purchases were bargains.

It was a time not only of expansion but of newfangled rages. Atlanta's
Pierce- Arrow dealer had recently signaled the end of the horse-and-buggy
era by torching twenty-five phaetons, victorias and sulkies in a public bon-
fire. The more daring debs were wearing "cubist gowns" and affecting a
"cubist walk" in line with the ideas of futurist painters. A bookstore in the
best shopping district was displaying prints of a French nude, "September
Morn," that had been banned in Boston. And in several weeks, the Atlanta
Georgian would kick off a campaign to raise the city's population from its
current 173,713 to 500,000 by 1920.

That many of these newcomers might be Yankees was fine with Atlan-
ta's elite, for unlike their impoverished kin, the hard-charging sorts who
reigned in Georgia's capital had long ago struck the Stars and Bars. In 1886,

14 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Henry Grady, the forward-looking editor of the Atlanta Constitution, told
investment-minded members of New York's New England Society: "We
have . . . put business above politics . . . We have reduced the commercial
rate of interest from 24 to 6 percent, and are floating 4 percent bonds. We
have learned that one northern immigrant is worth fifty foreigners." In the
wake of these remarks, the city's leaders had never looked back.

Deeply mulched in hyperbole, Atlanta— which after all had not been
incorporated until 1845 and consequently never did bear much resem-
blance to such older southern cities as Richmond or Charleston— had
become a place where influence as opposed to reverence, hustle as opposed
to charm composed the coin of the realm. For "live-wire boosters" who
wanted to strike it rich, it offered untold attractions. The textile and steel
industries were the most obvious allure. Yet the city would never truly sully
itself with the dust of the loom or the fire of the smelter. No, its destiny rode
the rails— the L & N, the Southern, the Atlanta and West Point— that con-
nected it to the North and West and made it a center of transportation, sales
and distribution.

If one man could have been said to embody Atlanta's progressive tem-
perament in 1 9 13, he was Georgia's governor-elect, John M. Slaton, linked
by blood to a tradition of high-mindedness and by marriage to one of
the city's great fortunes. His father was the longtime superintendent of
Atlanta's public schools. His wife, the former Sallie Grant, was heiress to a
$2 million estate conceived in property, built by railroads and compounded
in bonds.

John and Sallie Slaton inhabited the highest stratum of Atlanta society.
At forty-six, Georgia's new chief executive moved effortlessly from court-
house to boardroom to garden reception to the Paces Ferry Dancing Club,
where he was an avid turkey trotter. As a lawyer, he represented many of
the city's biggest businesses— among them, the Fulton Bag and Cotton
Mill. And as a politician, he consistently catered to corporate interests.
Observed the Constitution: He "not only has never known the bitterness of
defeat but [has] not even had to feel the twinge of a single temporary set-
back in a uniformly brilliant career."

If possible, the new first lady was an even more dazzling figure. Though
she had experienced profound grief (her first husband committed suicide),
Sallie Slaton had retained the grace and style of a celebrated belle while
maturing into a patroness of the arts. Educated at the Ballard Seminary,
where a smitten professor composed a piano trilogy whose component
pieces sang the pink of her lips ("Anemone"), the blue of her eyes ("The
Blue Bells") and the white of her brow ("The Lily of the Valley"), she now
devoted her talents to the Atlanta Players Club, where she was soon to

APRIL 26, I913 15

portray Lady Augusta Bracknell in a production of Oscar Wilde's The
Importance of Being Earnest. Sallie Slaton's charms were so universally
acknowledged that even the often piquant Polly Peachtree— the Geor-
gian's pseudonymous gossip columnist— offered an unqualified endorse-
ment: "I frankly and freely confess myself her ardent admirer. Her beauty
and wit will make the executive mansion during her husband's administra-
tion the most brilliant state court in all these United States."

On April 26, 1913, the story making the rounds was that John Slaton
and Luther Z. Rosser, arguably Atlanta's fiercest litigator, were merging
their law practices into the new firm of Rosser, Brandon, Slaton & Phillips.
While the Rossers were also pillars of Atlanta's patrician class, Rosser
was in demeanor and style Slaton's antithesis. As the blunt instrument
the city's powerful engaged to demolish those who stood in their way, he
had acquired a reputation for charging outlandish fees and employing
brusque courtroom tactics. He was presently earning the unheard-of sum of
$100,000 a year representing, among others, the Georgia Railway and Elec-
tric Company (predecessor of the Georgia Power Company), which was
embroiled in a battle in Rabun County, high in the Blue Ridge. The utility's
officers wanted to open a $5 million generating station in the mouth of pris-
tine Tallulah Gorge, but resistance from those claiming the project would
despoil "one of the greatest scenic wonders of the world" was furious and
had found its voice in an Appalachian widow whose husband, General
James Longstreet, had been a Confederate hero. It was Rosser's job to
make sure that neither this fiery opponent nor the hallowed specter she
invoked stood in the way of lights for Atlanta's streets or power for her fac-
tories.

As news of Slaton and Rosser's impending affiliation was bruited
about Atlanta, the principals refused to confirm the reports. However, the
governor-elect, back in town following a preliminary trip north to acquaint
financiers in Boston and on Wall Street with business opportunities in
Georgia, did consent to reflect on the excitement that had not only precipi-
tated the partnership but was invigorating both finance and fashion in the
city. "Whereas once Georgia was largely attractive to agricultural interests,"
Slaton told a reporter, "it is now attractive to manufacturers who wish to
harness her natural resources and reap profits in assured safety." One of the
greatest of these natural resources was, of course, the state's supply of child
laborers. Far from being frowned upon by industrial barons, the practice
was advocated for both its economic advantages and its supposed benefits
for the children. As no less a personage than Asa G Candler, president of
Atlanta's quintessential enterprise, the Coca-Cola company, had recently
stated: "The most beautiful sight that we see is the child at labor; as early as

l6 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

he may get at labor the more beautiful, the more useful does his life get to
be." In this, the National Pencil Company— whose 170-member workforce
consisted largely of teenage girls— was perfectly in step.

On April 26, 1913, dramatic proof of Atlanta's new status as a seat of com-
merce and culture could be found at the Municipal Auditorium. There,
at 8 p.m., Arturo Toscanini, the conductor of New York's Metropolitan
Opera Company, would raise his baton; Enrico Caruso, the fabled tenor,
would take the stage in the role of Mario Cavaradossi; and a stylishly
attired 6,433 would settle back in their seats for the season's grand finale
performance of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca.

During the previous week— "A Week of Wonders," proclaimed one
headline writer— Atlantans had celebrated the company's record-breaking
Southern engagement (seven shows, a $91,000 gate) with elegantly catered
cocktail parties, sumptuous late-night suppers in the ballrooms of Peach-
tree Street's hotels, and elaborate entertainments at the Piedmont Driving
Club. The festivities had been spirited in so many senses of the word that
the Constitution's editorial cartoonist had approvingly caricatured the city
on the paper's front page as a red-nosed dandy in top hat and tails clutching
a champagne glass from which half-notes and clef signs bubbled in giddy
profusion.

Leo Frank, however, avoided the dizzying round of opera-related festiv-
ities that were attracting most Atlantans of his station. In fact, Saturday
afternoon, while his wife and her mother enjoyed the Met's matinee pro-
duction of Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, Frank remained at
the office. The women missed Caruso, but the atmospherics were just as
transporting as those that would suffuse the evening show. The fashions
were just as smart. The diva, Frieda Hempel, just as inspired. And the illu-
sion that the host city had been transformed into Manhattan on the Chatta-
hoochee just as blinding.

As for the vast majority of Atlantans, at the exact moment the curtain was
rising for the Met's matinee, they were packing five and six deep on both
sides of Peachtree Street to watch the Confederate Memorial Day parade.
First, a police honor guard cleared the way for the grand marshal and
various dignitaries, most notably outgoing governor Joseph M. Brown, a
leading citizen of Marietta. Next, a brass band set an appropriately martial
tone for the companies of United States infantrymen, Georgia national
guardsmen, military academy cadets, Boy Scouts, Odd Fellows and Knights
of Pythias. The stage, of course, was being set for the thin gray line, and soon

APRIL 26, 1913 17

enough, the ragged formation of five hundred stooped veterans— many
in their patched butternuts, a few hoisting faded regimental banners—
straggled into view. "The majority of them," noted the Journal, "were afoot,
walking not so alertly as they did a few years ago. Some were riding, having
come to the day of life when exertion must be spared, [although] the flash in
their eyes showed that they had not forgotten the times, half a century ago,
when music bade them farewell as they went to battle."

The climactic scene in the afternoon's pageantry belonged to the
young— battalion after battalion of white-uniformed elementary school
students, each group accompanied by a drum corps. Stretched out over
seven blocks, the four thousand children marched proudly, orderly, only
occasionally capitulating to urges from the crowd to give the rebel yell.

Mary Phagan, however, never saw these dashing boys, never heard their
high-pitched cries of resurgent insurrection.

TWO

They found her around 3:30 Sunday morning at the rear of the
National Pencil Factory basement. Partially hidden behind a parti-
tion that closed off a storage shed running nearly the length of one
side of the place, she lay on her left shoulder, arms folded beneath her torso,
face pressed into a trash-filled depression, head pointed toward Forsyth
Street, toward the front. While her dress was hitched up around her knees
and a shoe was missing, not until they turned her over could they appreciate
the savage and perverse nature of the crime.

Caught in the beam of Call Officer W. F. Anderson's flashlight, the girl's
battered visage mesmerized even as it appalled: right eye purple and puffy,
cheeks bruised and badly scratched and, most severe, scalp jaggedly gashed
open just above the left ear. These wounds, however, had apparently not
caused death. Twisted around the girl's neck and tied in a slipknot in back
was a seven-foot length of K-inch wrapping cord. Girdling the noose were
two strips of cloth torn from her skirt, but such a clumsy, not to mention
curious, bit of handiwork could not obscure the signs of strangulation. A
trenchlike scar where twine had cut into flesh was plainly visible. Mean-
while, the poor thing's thickly swollen tongue protruded far over her lower
lip, and blood had bubbled from her mouth and ears.

Later, the responding officers would agree that the most chilling aspect
of all was the color of the body. When Newt Lee, the plant's Negro night
watchman, had phoned in the alarm, he'd said: "A white woman has been
killed up here." The girl, though, was black as pitch. Her features — even her
eye sockets and nostrils— were caked with soot, and her mouth was choked
with cinders. After fishing a scrap of paper from the debris upon which her
head so rudely rested, Sergeant R. J. Brown, the morning watch com-
mander, tried to wipe away the grime. "I rubbed the dirt and trash from her
face," the sergeant would subsequently remember, "and then I said that she
was a white girl, [but] the others said that she was colored."

The initial attempts to determine the victim's race— indeed, the initial
attempts to determine much of anything— were not made easier by the
surroundings. From the factory lobby, there were only two ways into the
basement— an elevator (metal door shut, car parked somewhere above)

LOOK OUT, WHITE FOLKS 19

and a wooden plank ladder that descended from a tiny scuttle hole. Some
200 feet long, the rock-walled, earthen-floored cavity was narrow as a cata-
comb and just as dark. The single permanent source of illumination, a flick-
ering gas jet at the front of the room, had been turned so low it reminded
Newt Lee of a lightning bug. Details— a boiler and toilet on one side, the
storage shed on the other— emerged as indefinite, ghostlike masses. Intensi-
fying the eerie gloom was the almost stifling odor. Over the years, so many
tons of sawdust and parings had been swept down here from the manufac-
turing departments above that, like a cavernous pencil sharpener, the
chamber reeked of cedar and lead.

Though the men from headquarters never admitted they were frightened
by this veritable tomb, they were surely unsettled— and that, too, was at first
a factor. After all, they'd been rousted from the dull and sleepy station house
and raced through the empty predawn streets at a 40-mile-per-hour clip.
Newt Lee had met them at the building's front door, ushered them across the
lobby and pointed to the scuttle hole. After clambering, one by one, into inky
blackness, the men had proceeded blindly— the only sound was the "crunch
crunch" of shoes striking the shavings-and-coal-slag-carpeted soil— until
the Negro, who toted a smoky lantern, had brought them to a halt with the
warning: "Look out, white folks, you'll step on her." And they might have. As
Anderson subsequently remarked, "I did not see the body until I reached it."

The officers ascertained the girl's color with surprising ease. Anderson
simply lowered one of her stockings: milky thigh, milky calf. She was white.
Based on the signs of a scuffle near the body, the men speculated that the
girl's slayer had pinned her face against the ground where, as she'd gasped
for breath, the grinds and ashes that were everywhere had adhered to her
skin, pitting and tarring it. As for the obvious question— how had Newt Lee
known she was not black— the officers initially didn't pursue it, for in deter-
mining the victim's race, they discovered lurid evidence suggesting that
another crime had preceded the murder.

While examining the girl's legs, Anderson noticed that the belts attach-
ing corset to garters were unfastened and that her underpants had been
ripped up the crotch. Sergeant Brown, in language that would prove too
graphic for the newspapers, subsequently described what the men saw: "By
raising the skirt a bit, you could see in between the mouth of the vagina,
close to the privates, and it had blood on it and blood on the drawers ... It
would flow on its own accord . . . You could see it run from her stomach,
this blood coming from her privates."

To everyone clustered around the corpse, the significance of the crimson
discharge was self-evident. The girl, in the euphemistic terminology of the
age, had been "outraged" or "criminally assaulted." And this is how it would
initially be reported, yet the last word on the subject of whether she had

20 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

been raped— whether she had, in fact, been mutilated— would not be
uttered for a long time, if ever.

So far as the officers could decipher the language of the dead, the victim
had spoken. After making a couple of last assessments— icy hands and stiff-
ening joints indicated she had evidently expired hours earlier— the men
began combing the basement for clues.

Taking into account the group's makeup, the search was surprisingly
thorough. Though Sergeant Brown, 49, was a twenty-year veteran of the
Atlanta Police; Call Officer Anderson, 3 1 , was a ten-year man; and Sergeant
L. S. Dobbs, another 49-year-old, also had two decades under his belt, the
others were civilians. W. W. "Boots" Rogers— an erstwhile Fulton County
officer, future bailiff and full-time swell— was along merely because he'd
chauffeured the party to the scene. And as for a young Atlanta Constitution
reporter named Britt Craig, he was there, according to his account, because
he'd been waiting at headquarters for a ride home; but, according to all
others, he'd been passed out drunk in Boots's machine.

The first item these men found was the victim's missing shoe poking out
of a garbage pile near the boiler. Next, they located a bloodstained hand-
kerchief several feet behind the body. Then, at the very rear of the cellar, up
a gently inclined service ramp, they noticed that a sliding wooden door
opening onto an alley had been tampered with. Though the door was
closed, an iron staple had been pried from it, rendering the hasp and lock
useless. Finally, they spotted a trail leading back from the elevator, suggest-
ing that the remains had been dragged the length of the basement.

The most significant discoveries, however, were made almost literally
under the dead girl's nose. It was there that Sergeant Dobbs, using a cane to
rake through the rubbish, dug up the first of two bewildering messages.
Eventually, the "murder notes," as they'd come to be known, would be
judged the case's most enigmatic pieces of evidence. But on this Sunday
morning, they did no more than focus suspicion on Newt Lee.

After ruminating a minute on the first of the notes— which was scrawled
on a sheet of lined white paper that had been detached from a gummed
book lying nearby— Dobbs started to read aloud:

he said he wood love me land down play like the night witch did it but that
long tall black negro did boy his slef

Yet before the sergeant could finish reciting this gumbo— in fact, just as he
pronounced the words "night witch"— Lee blurted something out. Later,
Newt would contend he said only that someone was trying to "put it off on"
him, but the officers would remember differently, claiming he declared:
"White folks, that's me."

LOOK OUT, WHITE FOLKS 21

A few minutes after Lee's outburst, Sergeant Dobbs found the other
note. This one, which also had been buried in the refuse near the dead girl's
head, was jotted across a yellow National Pencil Co. order sheet atop which
was printed the plant address and phone number and blank lines for date
and invoice information. Like its counterpart, the second communique
seemed to implicate Newt:

mam that negro hire down here did this i went to make water and he push
me down that hole a long tall negro black that hoo it wase long sleam tall
negro i wright while play with me

Up to this point, the officers had held their doubts about Lee in check.
The Negro— who was in his mid-sos and thus born into slavery— had com-
ported himself with the requisite docility and humility. As one writer would
subsequently describe him: "Lee [is] a black, ignorant, corn-field, pot-
likker-f ed darky. His head is flat as a ballroom floor. His big frame is slightly
bent, not from weakness but from the natural laziness of his type. [He] is
beyond doubt a white man's nigger." Accordingly, the men had patronized
the night watchman. But once the notes were aired, Dobbs immediately
accused him of committing the crime.

"You did this or you know who did it," the sergeant charged.

Lee, though he'd begun to shake, denied any connection with the murder.
Then, with the officers surrounding him, he told his story, one he repeated
without substantive variation several days later at the coroner's inquest:

[At] almost three o'clock ... I wanted to go into the basement on my
rounds. So ... I went down the ladder and went back to the toilet. I set the
lantern on the floor against the side of the toilet. I came out of the toilet
and stepped up a few feet. I don't know just how far. I looked to see if the
back door was all right and to see if there was any fire [a much dreaded
hazard at the factory] in the basement. Then I saw the body. I thought it
was something some devilish boys had put there to scare me. I went over
and saw it was a body and I got scared. Then I called the police.

Though Lee's narrative seemed believable, and while in it he managed to
explain how he'd determined the girl was white (her hair was simply too
straight to belong to any Negress), he did not satisfy the officers. To begin
with, he swore that when he saw the victim, she was lying faceup, not down,
as when the men arrived. Moreover, he couldn't say anything to persuade
them that his response to the initial note wasn't incriminating. Then there
was the undeniable fact that, like the "black negro" alluded to in each mis-
sive, he was ebony-complected. Finally, regardless of what he said, he was

22 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

still a colored man in a filthy cellar where a white girl lay dead and bleeding
from between the legs— which was reason enough for the police to hand-
cuff him and lead him away.

With the arrest of Newt Lee, the officers repaired to the factory's second-
floor offices and telephoned Chief of Detectives Newport A. Lanford, who
in turn alerted two of his best men, John Black and John Starnes. Then they
notified Bloomfield's Funeral Home, just a few blocks away on Pryor
Street, and in due course the undertaker arrived. Following a hasty exami-
nation, Will Gheesling placed the remains in his wicker basket and carried
them out the back door to the alley, where his hearse was waiting. Soon
thereafter, Detective Starnes appeared on the scene and, during a tour of
the basement, discovered more clues. First, in the trash pile where Sergeant
Dobbs and company had found the missing shoe, he located a blue straw
hat. Then, he noticed that the sliding wood door was covered with bloody
fingerprints and that a metal pipe that had apparently been used as a crow-
bar was leaning against a nearby wall.

Even as the official investigation was beginning, an equally important task
was in progress in the nearly deserted city room of the Atlanta Constitution.

Regardless of the fact that he'd been delivered to his biggest scoop in
a state of questionable sobriety, Britt Craig was not an alcoholic hack.
Quite to the contrary, this 19-year-old son of a respected newspaper family
(Craig's father edited a North Georgia weekly) was one of the Constitu-
tion's rising stars. True, Craig wasn't going to win many awards for writing.
His prose was marred by bad puns, and his accuracy was spotty. However,
he possessed two highly valued attributes in newsmen: luck and pluck.
Craig often came up with the stories his rivals didn't. Typical of the reporter
was a stunt he pulled when assigned to cover the Salon du Bon Ton lingerie
show at Atlanta's premier department store, Rich's. After sequestering
himself in a cranny rigged with a strategically placed mirror above the mod-
els' runway, he proceeded to spy on Mademoiselle Barboure's lace-frilled,
bone-corseted beauties as they paraded before an otherwise exclusively
female audience. " 'Figuratively' speaking," he enthused in the next day's
editions, "there's not a greater show in town." Craig, in other words, was an
ingenious scamp who habitually popped up in unlikely spots.

Exactly what measures Craig took to get his story of the murder into a
Sunday-morning extra aren't known, but the job couldn't have been easy.
Not only did he have to pound out his piece, but he had to awaken editors
and they in turn had to order pressmen back to work. However, there were

LOOK OUT, WHITE FOLKS 23

compelling reasons for such exertions, and they could be summed up in one
name: William Randolph Hearst. Craig knew that if he didn't move quickly,
the newshawks whom the press baron had imported to beef up the Atlanta
Georgian would poach his exclusive, so he moved, and by 6:30 a.m., the
Constitution's special edition was on the streets. In length, Britt's account
was actually modest— a boxed page-one item played next to a report on the
Metropolitan Opera's triumphant grand finale. (The paper buried the Con-
federate Memorial Day chestnut inside.) Yet in impact, it was enormous.
Here was the germ of the tale— a girl found dead in the bowels of a child-
labor factory— that would set the believers in Atlanta's past against the
apostles of its future.

That the news reached the two Atlanta families it would most directly affect
before vendors began hawking the Constitution's extra was due in large
part to the efforts of Boots Rogers.

As it so happened, Rogers had a 16-year-old sister-in-law named Grace
Hicks who worked at the pencil factory. While the detectives had been sur-
veying the crime scene and Britt Craig had been writing his story, Boots had
sped to Grace's home on McDonough Boulevard south of town, fetched
her and raced to Bloomfield's. There, the Hicks girl identified the victim as
Mary Phagan. Uncertain how to contact Mary's parents, Boots's sister-in-
law then called a mutual friend, 16-year-old Helen Ferguson, who worked
at the plant and lived in Bellwood. Young Helen had been close to Mary, so
close, in fact, that she knew the girl's stepfather— unlike the hero of the
poem "My Pa"— could not afford a telephone. She would have to carry the
sad message to the modest frame house at 146 Lindsay Street herself.

Ever since her daughter failed to appear for Saturday supper, Fannie
Coleman had been racked with worry. Around seven that evening, her hus-
band journeyed into the city, hoping that Mary had lost herself at the
movies. For nearly three hours, John W. Coleman stood at the edge of the
Bijou lobby, examining every face, failing to spot the one he so desperately
sought. Around ten, he returned home, but he ventured right back out,
now knocking on the neighbors' doors. The new prayer was that the girl,
who'd planned to take the trolley to Marietta on Sunday to visit her
country cousins, had, on a whim, left early. If so, she probably would have
called one of the several Bellwood families who allowed the clan to use their
phones. Yet, of course, no one had heard a thing. The police, when eventually
contacted, were also still in the dark. With nowhere to turn,the couple had
done what anxious parents do— they'd waited up. At daybreak, Helen Fer-
guson appeared, spoke but a sentence and Fannie Coleman— widowed
before Mary's birth and now bereft of the child William Joshua Phagan

24 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

never knew— collapsed. The family physician would soon be summoned to
administer a sedative.

Even as word of their loss was reaching John and Fannie Coleman, the
indefatigable Boots Rogers was barreling to a halt in front of the ash-green,
two-story East Georgia Avenue home where Leo and Lucille Frank lived
with Lucille's parents. Unlike at the dead girl's house, where the ensuing
tableau of sorrow and lamentation, no matter how searing, was predictable,
the scene that unfolded here was ambiguous and open to wildly subjective
interpretations.

Accompanying Boots was Detective John Black. At 40, Black was big and
bearish with suety jowls, a slab of a nose and rheumy eyes. Rarely seen with-
out a porkpie hat he wore pushed far back on his head, he more closely
resembled a railroad dick than a celebrated detective, and until four years
earlier, he had worked as a cooper at the Atlanta Brewing and Ice Company.
But appearances aside, Black was a bulldog of an investigator who'd already
made a reputation for himself by solving a couple of headline-making cases
and sending several men to the gallows. Suspicious by nature, he was the
instinctive sort, and this morning, his instincts told him something was
wrong.

To say that Black had a hunch about Leo Frank is putting it too strongly,
but ever since he and his colleague John Starnes had debriefed the respond-
ing officers back at the pencil plant around 5:30, he had entertained doubts.
What piqued his curiosity wasn't anything the factory superintendent had
done but something the men said he hadn't done. During the flurry of tele-
phone activity following Newt Lee's arrest, an operator had connected Call
Officer Anderson to Frank's home. For what had seemed like an eternity,
the policeman remained on the line waiting for someone to pick up. Noth-
ing. And that was not the first call to the superintendent's residence that
had gone unanswered this morning. According to the night watchman, after
he'd located the body, he, too, had tried and failed to reach Frank. In
marked contrast, the men had experienced no difficulties raising such com-
pany officials as the majority stockholder, Sig Montag.

Admittedly, not picking up the phone was no offense, and besides, John
Black believed old Newt was as guilty as he was dusky. Yet there was
enough here to convince the detective to approach Leo Frank warily and to
wait for the right moment before unveiling a critical bit of intelligence. By
day's end, the name Mary Phagan would be on a thousand tongues, but
before it became too widely circulated, the investigator wanted to see how
one man in particular responded upon hearing it.

When Black rang the Seligs' bell, Lucille Frank, wearing a heavy blue

LOOK OUT, WHITE FOLKS 2$

housecoat, appeared and ushered the detective and Boots into the parlor.
Her husband, she said, was still getting dressed but would be right down.

For five or six minutes— the amount of time that had passed since
he had answered the phone— Leo Frank had known that a policeman
was coming to see him. The prospect disconcerted him, but then, anyone
else who'd received the wake-up call John Starnes had given the factory
superintendent might have been disconcerted. At 50, Starnes was widely
regarded as the detective department's most "immaculate attache." Slen-
der, stern-faced, mustachioed and usually clad in a smart suit and bowler, he
could have passed as the head teller at a downtown bank. Generally,
Starnes was "suave and polite," yet this morning when speaking to Frank,
he had been abrupt and evasive, for like Black, he was aware of the earlier
effort to contact the factory superintendent, and it didn't sit well with
him. While specific aspects of the detective's conversation with Frank
would subsequently be debated, both parties were in accord as to its basic
drift:

"Is this Mr. Frank, superintendent of the National Pencil Company?"
Starnes had begun.
"Yes, sir."

"I want you to come down to the factory right away."
"What's the trouble? Has there been a fire?"
"No, a tragedy," Starnes had replied vaguely. "I'll send a car for you."

John Black and Boots Rogers had been waiting only a minute or two when
Frank entered the room through a portiere that separated the front of the
house from a hall linking it to both the kitchen and a staircase that led
to the second floor. By all accounts, the factory superintendent was in an
agitated state when he greeted his visitors. Dressed in a freshly pressed
pleated shirt, blue trousers and suspenders (the only missing pieces were
collar and tie), he paced restlessly across the parlor, wringing his hands
and firing questions so fast that he apparently didn't leave Black time to
answer: "Has anything happened at the factory? . . . Did the night watch-
man report anything to you? ... I dreamt I heard the phone ring around
four o'clock."

Evidently, Black's reply to this barrage was a curt "Mr. Frank, you had
better put your clothes on, and let us go to the factory." Subsequently, the
detective would remember it this way:

His voice was hoarse and trembling and nervous and excited. He looked to
me like he was pale ... He seemed to be nervous in handling his collar. He
could not get his tie tied, and talked very rapid.

26 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Boots Rogers would echo these impressions:

Mr. Frank seemed to be extremely nervous. His questions were jumpy . . .
His voice was a refined voice . . . kind of lady-like ... He was rubbing his
hands ... He seemed to be excited.

Yes, no one challenged the fact that Leo Frank was upset this Sunday
morning, but as to what that meant and whether Black, and earlier Starnes,
had anything to do with provoking it was another matter. From almost any
perspective, these fiercely unforthcoming men couldn't have helped but
inspire anxiety. They were obstinately mute. Later, Frank would recollect:

I asked them what the trouble was and the man who I afterwards found
out was Detective Black hung his head and didn't say anything.

In short, one man rattled on, the other two kept quiet. One man gestured
and gesticulated, the other two hunkered down. Only once— when some-
one suggested a cup of coffee to relax them all— did there seem to be a
chance for the parties to talk to instead of past each other. Yet far from
achieving its desired effect, this idea gave rise to an enduring misunder-
standing. The disagreement hinged on who actually proposed the plan.
According to Lucille Frank and Boots, it was Lucille, but according to
Black, it was Leo. Innocuous as this seems, the detective's version, which
would gain the greater credence, was eventually cited as evidence of an
attempt on the factory superintendent's part to avoid the inevitable. And as
for the coffee itself, none was ever served, as Black argued that Frank
needed something stronger. "I think a drink of whisky would do him good,"
he cracked, sending Lucille scurrying to find a bottle. Eventually, she came
back empty-handed, saying her father, who suffered from indigestion, had
polished off the last of their liquor the previous night.

Black and Rogers had been at the Franks' home for some ten minutes,
and as yet had offered no satisfactory explanation for why they'd come. As
it turned out, their reticence was about to end, but when and where they
told Frank that a girl had been found murdered in the factory basement and
that her name was Mary Phagan became grounds for yet another dispute.
As Frank would subsequently put it:

Now at this point . . . Mr. Rogers and Mr. Black differ with me on the place
where the conversation occurred— I say, to the best of my recollection, it
occurred right there in the house in front of my wife; they say it occurred
just as I left the house in the automobile; but be that as it may, this is the
conversation: They asked me did I know Mary Phagan, and I told them

LOOK OUT, WHITE FOLKS 27

I didn't. They then said to me, "Didn't a little girl with long hair hang-
ing down her back come up to your office yesterday sometime for her
money— a little girl who works in the tipping plant?" I says, "Yes, I do
remember such a girl coming up to my office, that worked in the tipping
room, but I didn't know her name was Mary Phagan" . . . and I finished
dressing, and as they had said they would bring me right away back, I
didn't have breakfast, but went right on with them in the automobile.

Though Rogers and Black would indeed differ with Frank— later, Boots
vividly recalled that Frank and Black were sitting in his backseat when the
detective broke the news, adding that Frank then offered up a worrisomely
complete list of reasons why he couldn't have known Mary Phagan — the dis-
agreement ultimately did not bear out Black's worst suspicion, for it wasn't
as if the superintendent betrayed a knowledge of the child's identity before
the detective mentioned it. However, the fact that the men could not later
agree on the place where the conversation occurred suggests that by the
time they departed for town, they weren't seeing anything in the same light.

Bloomfield's mortuary was a rambling one-story frame building halfway
between the state capitol and the factory. This was the group's first stop.
Will Gheesling met the men in his reception room, then led them down a
long passageway. After opening a door at the end of the corridor, the under-
taker briefly disappeared into darkness, leaving Boots and Frank at the
threshold, with Black just behind them and a wild-haired man who'd
entered the establishment in the party's wake behind Black. A second
passed, Gheesling switched on a brilliant electric lamp and there, laid out
on a circular cooling table, was Mary Phagan's body, her face turned toward
a far wall. To make sure everyone could see, Gheesling pulled down the
sheet that covered the corpse, then slipped his hands beneath the girl's
head, lifting it up like a battle trophy. Which gave rise to a critical disagree-
ment: Did Frank look, or did he recoil in revulsion and guilty fear?

John Black and Boots Rogers were positive that the plant manager
turned away. As Boots would later recollect:

Mr. Gheesling caught the face of the dead girl and turned it over towards
me. I looked then to see if anybody followed me and I saw Mr. Frank step
from outside of the door into what I thought was a closet. There was a little
single bed in there. I didn't see Frank look at the corpse. I don't remember
that Mr. Frank ever followed me in this room ... he could not have seen
her face because it was lying over towards the wall . . . His general manner
made me think that he was nervous.

28 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Not surprisingly, Frank would subsequently disagree:

I stood right in the door, leaning up against the right facing . . . Mr.
Gheesling . . . removed the sheet which was covering the body, and took
the head in his hands, turned it over, put his finger exactly where the
wound in the left side of the head was located— put his finger right on it; I
noticed the hands and arms of the little girl were very dirty— blue and
ground with dirt and cinders, the nostrils and mouth— the mouth being
open— nostrils and mouth just full of sawdust and swollen, and there was a
deep scratch over the left eye on the forehead; about the neck there was
twine . . . and also a piece of white rag. After looking at the body, I identi-
fied that little girl as the one that had been up shortly after noon the day
previous and got her money from me.

Gheesling, contending that his position behind the body blocked his sight
line, claimed he couldn't tell what Leo Frank did, but there was one other
impartial observer— the wild-haired man who'd followed the party into the
funeral home. This was the Atlanta Journal's 20-year-old police reporter,
Harold W. Ross. The hard-drinking, chain-smoking son of a Boulder, Col-
orado, mining engineer, Ross had dropped out of high school his sopho-
more year to take a reporting job on the Salt Lake City Tribune. Before
arriving in Atlanta, he'd gypsied across the country, hopping from newspa-
per to newspaper, acquiring an education and a skepticism that generally
doesn't come until far later in life. Although he was already experimenting
with the first-person plural style that would one day become the talk of
another town, he wasn't a graceful writer, yet he did pay exceptional atten-
tion to detail. Truth be told, he could be tediously precise. In short, Ross was
already very much the man who in 1925 would found The New Yorker

On this early morning, Ross— whose city editor had read the Constitu-
tion's extra— was charged with the unenviable job of coming up with a new
angle the Journal could get into Monday's editions. Thus he'd raced to
Bloomfield's. Later, he'd recall that he "saw Leo M. Frank as he looked
upon the mutilated and abused body of Mary Phagan in the morgue three
hours after her remains had been found."

Not that Ross was the final authority on the matter. No, the conflicting
accounts remained unreconciled, although the police version would gain
wider acceptance and have a greater impact. To John Black, Frank was sim-
ply more shaken than the admittedly upsetting circumstances warranted.

By 7:45 a.m. Sunday— the hour Boots and Black arrived at the National
Pencil Factory with Frank— a crowd had gathered out front, but the men

LOOK OUT, WHITE FOLKS 29

passed quickly through the onlookers. At the door, they were met by 47-
year-old N. V. Darley, a coworker the superintendent had asked his wife to
call. In charge of plant personnel, Darley was one of Frank's closest associ-
ates. The party thus complete, the men continued into the lobby, ascended a
set of stairs, then disappeared through another door.

Frank's office occupied a front corner of the building's second floor, adja-
cent to the packing room. A hundred feet or so farther back, through a set of
swinging metal doors, was the plating department. The metal department—
where spare parts were lathed, eraser tips fabricated, sheet brass stored and
Mary Phagan had worked— was also on this level. Yet despite their proxim-
ity to these operations, the superintendent's quarters were protected from
the dirt and din by an elevator lobby and an anteroom dominated by a mas-
sive cast-iron safe and staffed on weekdays by runners and a secretary.

It was in the anteroom that the men— now joined by Detective Starnes
and a handcuffed Newt Lee— set up operations. The first order of business
was to make sure that Mary Phagan was indeed the girl the superintendent
had paid the previous day. This fact, Frank declared, could be easily deter-
mined, and after working the safe combination and extracting the factory
payroll ledger, he opened the book and ran a finger down a page until he
stopped and said: "Yes, Mary Phagan worked here. She was here yesterday
to get her pay. I will tell you about the exact time she left. My stenographer
left about twelve o'clock, and a few minutes after she left the office boy left
and then Mary came in and got her money and left."

Next, someone suggested that Frank should see the spot where the body
had been found. Apparently, the factory superintendent chose this moment
to again request a cup of coffee, in Black's mind confirmation that he was
stalling, but the detectives said there was no time, so the party trooped to
the elevator lobby, a shabby room that was the plant's crossroads. On one
side of this L-shaped space, the lift stopped. On another, stairs led down to
the street level and up to the manufacturing floors. Also, the time clocks
that employees had to punch twice daily were here, as was the cashier's
window where on Fridays and Saturdays pay envelopes were distributed.
And not only money flowed from this chamber. Mounted on a far wall was
the fuse box that controlled the building's power. Since electricity was shut
off on Sundays, Frank needed to throw the switch inside the box if the
group was to take the elevator to the basement.

Frank experienced no trouble performing this task— however, when one
of the men asked him why the fuse box wasn't kept locked, he launched
into a wordy explanation involving insurance rates and a recent edict from
the fire inspector that struck Starnes and Black as overly detailed.

The lift itself was a cantankerous contraption primarily used to transport
freight. Once the motor coughed to life, the passengers filed on, and Frank

30 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

gave a tug at a steel cable that dangled from the top of the car and served as
a stop and start button, but the cable wouldn't budge. Later, he'd recall:

It seemed to be caught, and I couldn't move it ... it seemed like the chain
which runs down in the basement had slipped a cog and gotten out of gear
and needed somebody to force it back.

To the detectives, it appeared as if Frank— whose exertions were painful
to witness— was too upset to operate the device. As even the sympathetic
N. V. Darley would subsequently remember:

When we started down the elevator, Mr. Frank was nervous, shaking all
over. I can't say positively as to whether his whole body was shaking or
not, but he was shaking.

Finally, Darley— who was a heavyset sort and, as Frank said, "a great
deal stronger"— grabbed the cable, gave it a swift yank, and the men were
on their way, dropping into the basement where the car settled firmly
and, to everyone's disgust, malodorously, against the ground. Indeed, the
instant the lift hit bottom, a fresh, powerful stench wafted up from be-
neath the men. It was a stench they would never forget. Yet any chance to
submit the offending substance to a scientific examination had been squan-
dered hours earlier when a 35-year-old patrolman had failed to collect it as
evidence.

Around daybreak, R. M. Lassiter, whose beat included Forsyth Street,
had given the plant cellar a complete once-over. The first thing he'd spotted
was the trail running from a point just in front of the elevator pit all the way
back to the area where the child had been found. Like the responding offi-
cers, Lassiter believed that the body— which aside from the head contu-
sions was covered with abrasions on its left arm and leg— had been dragged
over the path. Lassiter's other discoveries, however, didn't avail themselves
of easy analysis. In the elevator pit itself —which like everything else in the
basement was full of waste and debris— he'd turned up a trove of items that
simply did not belong together. To wit: the victim's black umbrella, a big
ball of red knitting twine and "a fresh mound of human excrement that
looked like someone had dumped naturally." Lassiter had removed the first
two articles but left the third in its place, and it was this pile that the car car-
rying Frank and the detectives mashed, unleashing the noxious scent.

Other than acknowledging the fact that someone had stunk up the place,
the men who first breathed in the aroma paid no attention to, nor were they
curious about, its source, proceeding, instead, directly toward the back of
the cellar— in the process further trampling the potentially telltale trail,

LOOK OUT, WHITE FOLKS 31

destroying any opportunity to take footprints later. After examining the
spot where the body had been located, Frank accompanied the officers to
various other sites where clues had been discovered. Upon seeing how the
back door had been jimmied, the superintendent expressed concern that if
the opening wasn't secured, someone could break in, so he and Darley
zipped upstairs, grabbed hammer and nails, then zipped back. It was at
this juncture that Frank removed his jacket and for the benefit of Darley—
who in the past had chided him regarding his penchant for brown suits—
mentioned the fact that for a change, he was in blue. While intended to
break the tension, the line only raised eyebrows and was filed away by
Black and Starnes, who wondered why Frank was calling attention to the
fact. Yet this reaction was mild compared to that which greeted the superin-
tendent's awkward effort to perform the rudimentary task at hand. Appar-
ently, he could not make the hammer hit the nails, and once again, Darley
had to take over.

The door sealed up, the men returned to the second-floor offices, where
they found Atlanta's chief of detectives waiting. At 51, Newport A. Lanford
was stout and hale with a great graying walrus mustache. He had been with
the force for 25 years, and though his florid complexion and too-puffy eyes
hinted at base appetites and dubious connections, he was nonetheless a fix-
ture, a harrumphingly reassuring presence.

With Lanford on the scene, anxieties began to ease. During the course of
the next twenty minutes, Frank and Darley toured the detective chief
around the factory, spending much of that time on the third and fourth
floors amidst the German-engineered equipment that transformed rough
cedar slats into sleek writing implements. The men also peered into dressing
rooms, storage bins and the second-story metal department where Mary
Phagan had toiled. They saw nothing out of the ordinary. Their last stop was
at the time clocks. Here, Black and Starnes— with Newt Lee in tow—
rejoined the party. The night watchman was required as one of his duties to
punch in every half hour of his shift, indicating the completion of each
round. After obtaining the Negro's time slip from the night just ended,
Frank eyeballed it and proclaimed everything in order. Between 6 p.m.,
when Lee had reported to work, and 3 a.m., he'd hit all his marks. This fact
agreed upon, Frank initialed Lee's slip, writing "Removed 8:26" across it.
The superintendent then placed the slip in the safe, shut the door and
turned the lock.

For now, the detectives were satisfied and only wanted Frank to do them
the last favor of examining the murder notes, which had been taken to the
station house. So after walking back out to Forsyth Street, the men once
again piled into Boots's car— Black, Starnes and Lee riding in back; Darley
and Frank up front with Frank perched on his friend's lap— and were soon

32 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

racing east on Decatur Street toward headquarters. The trip was uneventful
save for the fact that to a soul, everyone noticed the superintendent could
not stop shivering.

At the station house, the officers quickly ascertained that the murder
notes were not available for examination. As a critic of the Atlanta police
would later phrase it, they had been "borrowed," apparently by the Jour-
nal's Harold Ross, who during his time in town acquired a reputation for
being light-fingered around newsworthy documents. That the authorities let
the notes— as yet undusted for fingerprints or examined by any experts—
out of their hands was, of course, a disaster. Yet in Lanford's office Sunday,
no one voiced any concern about the missing evidence, and after a brief and
apparently cordial discussion, the detective chief informed the factory
superintendent that he was free to go.

From the station house, Frank— joined by Darley— walked back to
Bloomfield's, evidently to see the body, but Dr. J. W. Hurt, the county physi-
cian, was conducting his postmortem, so the men proceeded on to the Mon-
tag Paper Company, which was in the general vicinity, hoping to find Mister
Sig. But Montag had not come in. So Frank caught a trolley car for the
Washington Street section he and his superior both called home. After stop-
ping at Montag's residence and talking to him briefly, Frank returned to
East Georgia Avenue. It was 10:45 AM - an d at l ast he got his cup of coffee.

Despite the fact that Chief Lanford and his men were discomfited by
Leo Frank's twitchy behavior, as of Sunday morning they did not regard
the superintendent as a suspect. In fact, the detectives— their ranks now
swelled by such local legends as "two-fisted" Pat Campbell, a 46-year-old
son of Castle Cam, Donegal County, Ireland— believed that the murder of
Mary Phagan was a "Negro crime" and that the Negro who did it was Newt
Lee. Buttressing this conviction was an experiment Sergeant L. S. Dobbs
had conducted back at the factory. While his colleagues had been busy with
Frank, Dobbs had dragooned a black man who worked at a Forsyth Street
livery stable, ordered him to lie in the exact spot where the dead girl had
been found and then instructed Lee to repeat the steps he'd taken that led
to the discovery of the body. Thus the night watchman had again descended
the ladder, walked to the toilet, squatted, placed his lantern at his feet and
gazed into darkness. To Dobbs, the exercise confirmed what he'd thought
from the start: the globe of Newt's light was so smudged that "unless one
looked directly at the body it could not have been seen from the toilet."
Dobbs believed the night watchman was lying.

All day Sunday, investigators incessantly grilled Lee. Yet even as the
detectives worked Newt over, other angles began to develop, one predi-

LOOK OUT, WHITE FOLKS 33

cated on the notion that while a Negro may have committed the murder, it
was at a white man's bidding. The event that inspired the officers to make
this leap was the late-morning arrival of Edgar L. Sentell at Chief Lanford's
office. A 2 1 -year-old grocery store clerk and longtime acquaintance of
Mary Phagan, Sentell had read Britt Craig's story and believed himself to
be in possession of a vital clue. Around 12:30 Saturday night, as he'd been
walking home from work, he said he'd seen the "tired and angry" victim
being shepherded along Forsyth Street by an erstwhile streetcar conductor
named Arthur Mullinax. Though the part of town where Sentell claimed to
have spotted the girl was dark, illuminated only by the intermittent lights of
cheap fruit-and-water stands, the flickering flame of a peanut roaster here
and there and the dull glow of the city lamps, he was certain that his eyes
hadn't failed him, for he said that when he'd called out, "Hello, Mary," she
had replied, "Hello, Edgar."

Sentell's story so impressed the investigators that late Sunday evening
an officer picked up the 24-year-old Mullinax at his girlfriend's house and
brought him to headquarters. While Mullinax proclaimed his innocence, he
was an excellent suspect. For one thing, he not only admitted having known
Mary Phagan, he confessed he'd been enamored of her. The two had ap-
peared in the Western Heights Baptist Church's 1912 Christmas production
of Snow White, Mary playing the title role and Mullinax a blackface part.
At the station house, Mullinax told a reporter: "I couldn't keep my eyes
off her. She noticed it, and while I was standing near her, she remarked
that I looked good with my face blacked. I turned to her and replied that
T'd keep my face blacked all the time, then.' " Moreover, when Sentell ap-
peared to identify Mullinax, he pointed an accusing finger at him and in the
presence of a half-dozen policemen announced: "That's the man who was
with the girl last night. There's not a doubt about it." With that, Mullinax, a
doe-eyed cracker Casanova, was booked and jailed. The charge— suspicion
of murder.

While the detectives believed that in Lee and Mullinax they had two
strong suspects, they were also looking into another possibility. Sunday
afternoon, one E. S. Skipper appeared at headquarters to say that on Satur-
day night he'd seen a girl answering the description of Mary Phagan walk-
ing on a street near the pencil factory in the company of three young men.
What attracted his attention, Skipper said, was that the girl "was reeling
slightly, as though affected by drugs or narcotics, and was weeping." Soon,
officers were scouring the city for the unidentified youths.

Around three in the afternoon, Leo Frank returned to town to visit Bloom-
field's. There, hundreds of mourners— the majority of them strangers who'd

34 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

read Britt Craig's scoop— had congregated. In fact, the line snaked around
the block. Eventually, ten thousand people (nearly double the number who
had attended the Metropolitan Opera's final performance) would file by.
Many, of course, came to grieve for Mary Phagan, but more came to peer
into the open white casket in which the victim reposed, her throat— despite
Gheesling's efforts— necklaced by the violet indentation of the noose.

Frank stayed at the funeral home long enough to pay his respects and
speak to a few employees— among them Darley and the factory office boy,
Alonzo Mann— then proceeded to headquarters. The Journal had returned
the murder notes, and the detectives wanted Frank to look at them. Appar-
ently, the superintendent could make nothing of them, so he dropped back
by the plant, where another crowd had gathered.

Yet for most of the day's dwindling hours, Frank sought refuge in
Atlanta's Jewish enclave. First, he and Lucille dropped by the Carl Wolf-
sheimers' and talked about the murder with a group of friends who'd
assembled for a postopera party, among them the couple's Athens, Georgia,
in-laws, Julian and Philip Michael; Virginia Silverman; May Lou Liebman;
and Julian Loeb. Then it was on to Alexander Marcus's, and from there, to
Charlie Ursenbach's, where such familiar faces as Harold Marcus and Ben
Wiseberg were present. Come dusk, Frank found himself alone and strolled
through the verdant neighborhood. Down Bass, up Washington and over to
Georgia he walked, all the while keeping the spires of the Hebrew Orphan's
Home in view. Later at home— where the Seligs were hosting a bridge party
attended by the Lippmans, the Wolfsheimers and the Strauses— Frank
caught up with the morning's newspapers. As cards were shuffled and rub-
bers dealt, he sat to the side and read. In Europe, Austria was preparing to
invade Montenegro, while in New York, medical researchers were working
on a tuberculosis serum. Locally, sports fans were overjoyed that after a
weeklong holdout, Ty Cobb— the Georgia Peach— had signed a $12,500
contract with the Detroit Tigers. Immersed in such accounts of events great
and small, Frank betrayed no hint of disquiet within, no apprehension
regarding the storm gathering without.

THREE

O:

all the images Atlantans could have awakened to that Monday
| morning, few could have been more ghoulishly titillating than the
one of Mary Phagan stripped down the center of the Atlanta Geor-
gian's front page. As McLellan Smith, in 1913 a Hearst reporter, would
recall years later: "We sent a photographer to the undertaker's and got a
picture of her on the slab." The Georgian's death likeness was not, however,
everything it seemed to be. Or, to put it precisely, it was more than it
seemed to be. One didn't have to scrutinize the shot too closely to notice
the disconcerting fact that its deceased subject was holding her skirts in her
left hand as if quite alive and about to curtsy. Then there was the coy cap-
tion: "Photograph of Mary Phagan showing her in street dress." The image,
in short, was a composite fabricated by cutting the head off the shot of the
victim and pasting it atop a shot of another, more animate girl's torso. In
any of the dozen or so American metropolises whose citizens were used to
the excesses of Hearst journalism, such a production would not have raised
the collective pulse rate. Indeed, at the New York Journal, Hearst's flam-
boyant flagship, the doctored morgue mug shot was a speciality of the
house. But in Atlanta, where Hearst had only recently set up shop, this sort
of thing had never before been seen, and folks couldn't plunk down their
two cents fast enough.

Monday's Georgian devoted five pages to the murder. For starters, the
sheet made a spectacle of the Phagan family's grief. Beneath such headlines
as mrs. coleman prostrated by child's death, various members of the
clan spoke searingly of their loss. Lamented the poor thing's uncle, D. R.
Benton of Marietta: "She was just a little playful girl without a bad thought
in her mind, and she has been made victim of the blackest crime that can be
perpetuated [sic]. 99 And her mother added: "The poor baby. If you only
could have seen her. She looked so beautiful and so young and so bright!
She said she was only going to see the parade before she came home. And
now look!" Fannie Coleman then invoked the issue of child labor, making
her daughter a martyr to the cause the Georgian had been flogging for
months. "I'm so sorry for other young girls working everywhere," she was
quoted as saying. "To think that they're all open to the same things and

36 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

there is nothing to protect them." From a woman so distraught that on Sun-
day morning she'd been sedated, it seemed an improbable utterance, but in
the incantatory realm of Hearst journalism, if a dead girl could be depicted
holding her skirts, a mourning mother could serve as an editorial mouth-
piece.

Exploding amidst these lachrymose accounts were the sharper reports of
other Hearst ordnance, neighbors of slain girl cry for vengeance,
boomed one headline, girl's grandfather vows vengeance, boomed
another. The desire for retribution conveyed by such headlines was spelled
out in the texts they topped. One of the sternest blasts was delivered by a
twelve-year-old playmate of the victim: "I'd help lynch the man that killed
poor Mary," pledged Vera Epps. "If they'd let me, I'd like to hold the rope
that choked him to death." Yet it was the patriarch, William Jackson Phagan
(now returned from Alabama), who spoke most vehemently, and the re-
porter the Georgian assigned to tell his story— a 23-year-old would-be
Theodore Dreiser named Herbert Asbury— stirringly evoked the scene:

Standing with bared head in the doorway of his Marietta home, with
tears falling unheeded down his furrowed cheeks, W. J. Phagan cried to
heaven for vengeance for the murder of his granddaughter, fourteen-year-
old [sic] Mary Phagan, and vowed that he would not rest until the mur-
derer had been brought to justice.

In a silence unbroken save by the sound of his own sobs and the noise of
the gently falling rain, the old man lifted his quavering voice in a passion-
ate plea for the life of the wretch who had lured the little girl into the dark-
ness of a deserted building and strangled her to death. It was an infinite
grief— the grief of an old and broken man— that Mr. Phagan expressed
when, with hands outspread imploringly, he invoked divine aid in bringing
the murderer of the child to justice.

"By the power of the living God," prayed the old man, his voice rising
high and clear above the patter of the rain and the roar of a passing train,
"I hope the murderer will be dealt with as he dealt with that innocent
child. I hope his heart is torn with remorse in the measure that his victim
suffered pain and shame; that he suffers as we who loved the child are suf-
fering. No punishment is too great for the brute who foully murdered the
sweetest and purest thing on earth— a young girl. Hanging cannot atone
for the crime he has committed."

Asbury's account pulsated with heartbreaking details. But in truth, it had
been submitted to what was known at the Georgian as "a little laboratory
work"— the facts had been improved upon. Years later, Asbury would con-
fess his sins. Yes, he did speak to William Jackson Phagan, and yes, the

EXTRA, EXTRA 37

bereaved man did beseech the Lord, but in writing the piece, Asbury felt it
lacked Hearstian punch. Which is why he invented the atmospherics. "It
wasn't raining," Asbury admitted, "although it might well have been."

One of the most sensational items to appear in Monday's Georgian—
certainly one whose repercussions would reverberate powerfully during
the coming days, influencing the initial direction of the investigation— was a
two-column line drawing displayed prominently atop page two. Headlined
"Who Is This Man?" the sketch depicted a tall, slender, black-haired 25-
year-old wearing a straw boater, blue suit and tan shoes. Based on the
description grocery store clerk Edgar L. Sentell had given the police Sun-
day that resulted in the arrest of Arthur Mullinax, the illustration offered
Atlantans a possible suspect, and notwithstanding the fact that Mullinax
was behind bars, every slender, black-haired fellow in town now became the
object of stares and whispers.

The Georgian also offered the populace the incentive to take matters
into its own hands. Festooned above Monday's front-page masthead was
the banner: "$500 REWARD." This was the sum the Hearst organization
said it would pay for "EXCLUSIVE Information Leading to the Arrest
and Conviction of the Murderer." At a time when well-compensated At-
lantans earned only $200 a month and most took home less (at ten cents an
hour, Mary Phagan would have needed a year and a half to earn $500), the
mention of such an extravagant figure was intoxicating. In effect, the
bounty served to deputize the entire city, and by late Monday, the officers
working the case would be spending more time following dubious tips than
developing legitimate leads.

Just how many extras the Georgian published Monday is disputed—
surviving copies confirm at least eight, but estimates go as high as 20. (The
New York Journal printed 40 extras the day after the sinking of the Ameri-
can battleship Maine in the Havana harbor in February 1898.) Regardless,
nearly every hour from 8:00 a.m. on, a new edition of the Georgian rolled
off the presses at 20 East Alabama Street and within minutes was in the
hands of newsboys:

new strangling arrest, screamed the Afternoon Edition.
arrested as girl's slayer, echoed the Home Edition.

GANTT ARRESTED AS SLAYER OF GIRL, TELLS STORY TO GEORGIAN,

promised the Night Extra, in a line that referred to a new suspect.

By dark, Atlanta was awash in these extras— or pinks, as they were some-
times called because their streamers were printed in scarlet ink that lent
everything a sizzling urgency. Not since William Tecumseh Sherman had the
city experienced such a bombardment. As Herbert Asbury would later

38 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

note: "Our paper was in modern parlance, a wow. It burst upon Atlanta like
a bomb and upon the Constitution and Journal like the crack of doom."

For proprietor William Randolph Hearst, Monday's Georgian was a com-
bination fiftieth birthday and tenth wedding-anniversary present. That
evening, Hearst and his wife celebrated both occasions with a dinner
dance— the menus were engraved on a scroll of tin with a photograph of
the couple on top— at their 30-room apartment (the largest in Manhattan)
in the Clarendon Building at West End Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street.
Among the 50 friends in attendance were Elbert H. Gary, the president of
U.S. Steel, and Joseph Duveen, the art dealer who was helping Hearst
acquire the treasures of Europe that would fill the castle he would soon
build in San Simeon, California. Hearst's reaction to the gift his Atlanta edi-
tors bestowed upon him on this occasion was undoubtedly favorable,
for their handling of the Phagan murder was an homage to the master—
himself.

By 1913, America's journalistic wildcat was at the height of his power.
His empire stretched from San Francisco (the Examiner) and Los Angeles
(also the Examiner) on the West Coast to Boston (the American) and New
York (the Journal) on the East with vital points (Chicago, Detroit, Balti-
more) in between.

At their best, the Hearst newspapers were vigorous trustbusters, news-
print knights errant that jousted with the railroad and steel monopolies
and championed the little man. They were also stylishly written, featuring
the sort of syndicated stars (Ambrose Bierce, Damon Runyon) that only
Hearst could afford. Moreover, the papers pioneered the use of bold head-
lines and photography. The Chief, as the publisher was known, knew how to
get readers' attention.

At their worst, however, the Hearst newspapers encouraged reckless-
ness. "In a strict sense," notes W. A. Swanberg in his tough-minded biogra-
phy Citizen Hearst, they "were not newspapers at all. They were printed
entertainment and excitement— bombs exploding, firecrackers popping,
victims screaming, flags waving, cannons roaring, houris dancing, and
smoke rising from the singed flesh of executed criminals." Deceit, gore,
petty vendettas, self-aggrandizing bombast— all were ingredients in the
formula. "To be a Hearst reporter," adds the biographer, "required talents
unsought by sober journals— a lively imagination, a fictional sense that
could touch up news stories with vivid glints, balanced by a subtle under-
standing of how far one could go without being accused of fakery."

The most infamous example of the Hearst style had, of course, occurred
in 1898 when his martial vaporings kindled the Spanish- American War.

EXTRA, EXTRA 39

Motivated by a desire to score a circulation victory for the New York Jour-
nal against the rival New York World, the Chief had let neither fact nor cau-
tion stand in his way. After receiving a cable from Frederic Remington
(ultimately remembered for his cowboy sculpture but at the time Hearst's
man in Havana) telling him, "Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. I
wish to return," Hearst had imperially rejoined: "Please remain. You fur-
nish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." And he had. After the sinking of
the Maine, the Chief had ignored any evidence that the disaster might have
been an accident, running out saber-rattling banner after saber-rattling
banner. Typical was the double-deck headline atop a February 17 edition:

THE WARSHIP MAINE WAS SPLIT IN TWO
BY AN ENEMY'S SECRET INFERNAL MACHINE

The Journal had pounded home the point until an initially cautious Presi-
dent William McKinley ordered in the troops. In Swanberg's verdict, ren-
dered sixty years after the fact, "Hearst's coverage of the Maine disaster
still stands as the orgasmic acme of ruthless, truthless newspaper jingoism."
The Chief, however, wasn't worried about history's judgment. For him the
key point was this: Before hostilities started, the Journals circulation hov-
ered at 800,000; afterward, it stood at 1,250,000.

Though Hearst was in many ways to the American manor born— scion of
a wealthy California family (his silver-mining father made his first fortune
in the Comstock lode, his second at Anaconda); San Francisco-bred;
Harvard-educated; initiated into journalism not as an ink-stained wretch
but as proprietor of the going concern, the San Francisco Examiner, that
his father gave him— he remained, oddly, an outsider. Most observers of
the day contended that he was lonely, but more probably, his remove was
the product of immense egocentricity, with its accompanying feeling of
superiority. As with many such American originals, Hearst believed the
only house where he could feel truly at home stood at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue, and since 1900— when he'd used his papers to launch a run for the
Democratic nomination— he'd been seeking the presidency. In the process,
Hearst had proved himself to be a man of mutable loyalties. In 1908,
rebuffed by the Democrats, he'd formed a third party (the Independent)
and dictated a ticket beholden to himself. In 1912, he'd swung around to the
Republicans, pursuing an endorsement from former president Theodore
Roosevelt by offering the old Rough Rider the ultimate bully pulpit as
columnist for the Hearst papers. Rejected by the GOP, Hearst had of late
returned to the Democratic fold, his presidential yearnings unabated—
which was why he'd acquired the Atlanta Georgian.

Throughout Hearst's decade-long pursuit of the presidency, he'd courted

40 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

several powerful Georgians he believed could deliver the key to a Demo-
cratic nomination— the Solid South. The first object of his blandishments
was the firebrand Tom Watson. Not only did Hearst puff Watson's populist
effusions in the New York Journal; his trusted adjutant, Arthur Brisbane,
invited "the Sage" to Manhattan, took him to lunch at Delmonico's and
offered him command of Hearst's new morning paper, the New York Amer-
ican, at $10,000 a year. The Sage, however, would not leave Dixie, so the
Chief's attentions drifted to John Temple Graves, the Georgian's founding
editor and a Watson protege. Graves was only too happy to answer Hearst's
call, and for the rest of his career he'd do his bidding, editing the American,
running for vice president in 1908 on the Independent ticket and, in 1912,
acting as his agent during negotiations to buy the Georgian.

On February 5,1912, when William Randolph Hearst's purchase of the
Georgian was announced, the paper seemed an unlikely vehicle for some-
one who aspired to the highest office in the land.

The Georgian had been launched a mere six years earlier by the real
estate developer Fred Seely, yet despite its owner's profession, the sheet
was anything but forward-looking. Under Graves's stewardship, the Geor-
gian's editorial columns advocated reactionary populism while its news
columns were often used to cast stones at such local powers as Coca-Cola.
In a boomtown like Atlanta, these positions ran counter to the prevailing
winds. Moreover, the Georgian was boring, its front page usually cluttered
with bland wire-service accounts from distant lands. The most exciting
feature in Hearst's new acquisition was the Saturday "Poultry, Pet and Live-
stock" tabloid, which carried "Bill Zimmer's Hen Call" column and photo-
graphs ("By Our Chicken Expert") of pullet after pulchritudinous pullet.
With a circulation of 38,000, the Georgian was Atlanta's weakest daily.

The dominant voices in Georgia journalism in 1912 belonged to the
morning Atlanta Constitution, the mouthpiece of the New South, and the
evening Atlanta Journal, which, as its masthead proclaimed, Covered Dixie
Like the Dew. Though separately owned and of varying circulations (the
Journal, thanks to its strong rural following, reported an audited circulation
of 52,000; the Constitution, just 41,405), the papers were in many ways sim-
ilar. Each boosted Atlanta's metropolitan aspirations. Each devoted count-
less inches to the doings of the capital's social elite. And each, it went
without saying, purveyed the stereotypic view of Negroes.

Yet there were differences, in both style and substance. The Constitution
was by far the breezier and less formal of the two. It was the brassy voice of
Dixie's city of big shoulders— cotton broker for the world, cola maker,
player with railroads and the South's freight handler. It took chances, fol-
lowed hunches. The Journal, on the other hand, was more conservative and

EXTRA, EXTRA 41

literary; it still used honorifics— "Mr." Slaton— and in 191 2, it unveiled a
Sunday magazine. Like Harold Ross, its reporters took obsessive care with
the facts.

There were, of course, sharper distinctions between the papers, for this
was the age of partisan journalism. The Constitution, published and edited
by Clark Howell, was with a few reservations the organ of Governor Joseph
Brown. The Journal, published by James Gray, was with no reservations the
organ of its founder, United States Senator Hoke Smith, Brown's rival. As a
consequence, the sheets fought continuously, the battles intensifying during
Georgia's Democratic primaries. The Constitution supported the railroads
(Brown was connected with the Western and Atlantic line), while the Jour-
nal supported reform. (Smith had been a personal injury lawyer before
entering politics and had campaigned against the railroads' grip on the
South.)

Despite the fractiousness of these disputes, they were, in any final analy-
sis, family feuds. The Clark Howells and James Grays, the Hoke Smiths
and Joseph Browns— in fact, all the men who ran Atlanta's newspapers—
were, if not brothers in blood, brothers in the same larger faith. They'd at-
tended the University of Georgia, dated girls from Athens's Lucy Cobb
Institute— a rigorous finishing school on whose ornately carved verandas
many a romance had bloomed— married each other's sisters and cousins
and buried each other's fathers. Thus, while they might spar in print and
hate for life, the clashes— save for those involving the unfettered Tom Wat-
son—rarely threatened what was, at heart, a rigidly ordered world, one
rooted in common lineage and preserved by mutual interests. Sons of the
true South, their bonds went deeper than factional politics.

Within a month after purchasing the Georgian, William Randolph
Hearst had utterly transformed the paper. Overnight, the stale features,
stodgy layouts and irrelevant wire-service stories from faraway locales dis-
appeared, replaced by 120-proof Hearst journalism. Every day, the Geor-
gian's redesigned front page played up a jarring local crime story, and if
there were no jarring local crimes, the editors would pull together a dozen
unrelated items from the police blotter and run them beneath the banner
crime wave sweeps city. Inside, a host of new columnists— most writing
under flashy noms de plume— made their debuts. In her "Chatter of Soci-
ety" column, Polly Peachtree— a Dixified Cholly Knickerbocker— broad-
cast bits of gossip while chronicling tea parties. Meantime, in her "Advice
to the Lovelorn" department, Beatrice Fairfax— as the syndicated Marie
Manning was known— salved the wounds of the heartsick in a warm and
winning style. Mixed into this stew were Hearst's famed cartoons (among
them, the popular Barney Google), alliteratively titled sports departments

42 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

("Jolts and Jars in the Squared Circle," "Bunts and Bingles of the Baseball
World"), original artwork and so many photographs that the paper some-
times resembled a picture gallery.

Simultaneously, the Georgian inaugurated an editorial stance that, while
remaining true to the sheet's combative roots, managed to throw a bone to
Atlanta's ruling elites. Hearst had been in possession but a week when the
paper began assailing the very symbol of patrician hegemony— the Georgia
Railway and Electric Company. Beneath the page-one screamer "This Is
Why Atlanta's Electricity Must Be Cheaper," the paper charged the utility
with gouging consumers. Yet in the same edition that kicked off the cam-
paign, the editorial page boomed: "Be An Optimist and Hitch Your Wagon
to the Star of Atlanta's Destiny." Beneath this caption, Atlantans were
urged to boost more loudly, to cheer "new skyscrapers and roads" and "the
real estate and population boom."

The hand orchestrating the Georgian's journalistic balancing act be-
longed to Keats Speed, erstwhile managing editor of the New York Journal
and, equally important, a native of Kentucky. Speed, in Asbury's estima-
tion, "was familiar with the South and Georgia; he knew exactly what the
people would accept." To enable the editor to do the job, Hearst had
imported what even fifty years later one old-time Georgia newsman termed
"the finest staff of any paper in the country." City editor Mike Clofine was a
New York Journal alum. Police reporter William Flythe, a native Georgian,
would be in Atlanta just two years, then move on to cover the Mexican
revolution. Photographers Johnny Brown and Matty Mathewson were on
loan from the Chicago American. A few holdovers from the old Georgian
remained, among them the insightful political editor James B. Nevin and a
silver-tongued feature writer from Marietta named O. B. Keeler. But by and
large, everyone involved was a hired gun.

One of the most talented of these hired guns was that journalistic rain-
maker Herbert Asbury. During the 1920s, Asbury would write such roguish
books as The Gangs of New York, while contributing frequently to the
nation's leading magazines.

"Hearst Comes to Atlanta," Asbury's 1926 account for the American
Mercury of the Georgian's coverage of Mary Phagan's murder and all that
followed offers the only insider's view of how Hearst journalism trans-
formed a hideous crime into a conflagration. Equal parts reportage and
indictment ("Had not Hearst owned the Georgian" asserts Asbury, "the
story probably would have died a natural death"), the piece is unsparing in
its assessments, including those of its author. But it is most unsparing in its
judgment of a newly arrived editor.

Several weeks before the Phagan murder, the Chief, believing that Keats
Speed had put the Georgian on sound Hearstian footing, recalled the editor

EXTRA, EXTRA 43

to New York. The evidence— most especially, a 22,000 circulation gain—
boded well. Furthermore, Hearst had used his acquisition to form a friend-
ship with a rising political star he could envision aiding his presidential
ambitions in the South: Governor-elect John Slaton. (Just days before the
Phagan killing, in fact, Hearst had feted the Slatons at his New York apart-
ment.) The situation seemed in hand, and the Chief turned the reins over to
Foster Coates.

By 1913, the 53-year-old Coates— known behind his back as "Curser"
and regarded as one of the most profane men in a business of profane
men— had become Hearst's roving surrogate. One month he was in Los
Angeles, the next San Francisco, the next New York. Yet despite having
graduated to management, Coates remained, at heart, the greatest page-
one editor of his day, the virtual headline wizard who as managing editor of
Joseph Pulitzer's World in 1898 had gone one-on-one with the Chief during
the circulation war that sparked the shooting war in Havana. (It was a
Coates screamer that became the conflict's rallying cry: remember the
Maine.) Whatever gains the Journal made following the sinking of the
American battleship, the World matched (Pulitzer sold five million papers
the week the battleship exploded), and Coates deserved much of the credit.
Or, in Pulitzer's view, the blame. Pulitzer valued the circulation victories
Coates was winning but was offended by the editor's methods, and once the
Spanish- American War ended, he ordered his pressmen to melt the cases of
three-inch lead type with which Coates had worked his magic. For the edi-
tor, it was a harsh rebuke, one that William Randolph Hearst, who'd recog-
nized a kindred spirit when he read him, used to his advantage. For the
Chief, men like Coates were invaluable, and he wooed and ultimately won
him by appealing to both his vanity and his checkbook. Within days of
going to work for the Journal, Coates was tooling around Manhattan in a
sporty new $ 1 ,700 automobile.

Curser Coates enjoyed the perks of power, and upon arriving in Atlanta,
he settled in at the luxurious Georgian Terrace Hotel on Peachtree Street
and Ponce de Leon Avenue in one of the capital's plushest enclaves. It was
there, on Sunday morning, April 27, that he read Britt Craig's scoop in the
Constitution's extra and, in Asbury's words, "saw the possibilities immedi-
ately." By noon, as the staffs of the Journal and Constitution, again quoting
Asbury, "slumbered peacefully in church or otherwise wasted the Sabbath,"
every last Georgian reporter was hard at work in the newspaper's Alabama
Street newsroom.

For Coates, it was 1898 all over again. Suddenly, he was back at the helm
of a great newspaper atop a breaking story. Telephones ringing, typewriters
clattering, adrenaline surging— this was what newsmen lived for. This was
also— for someone who had literally just stepped off the train— an environ-

44 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

ment conducive to rashness and foolhardiness. Even as he was caught up in
Coates's machinations, Herbert Asbury was alarmed. Where Speed had
realized from the start that "the Georgian couldn't do many of the things
that the Journal did," Asbury would later write, Coates, "knowing little if
anything of the South or the Southern temperament, thought the Georgian
could do these things and more." And what made it all so explosive was that
the journalistic shock troops at Coates's command had been sitting around
for months bored out of their minds by life in what to Hearst may have
been a critical stop on his way to Washington but to them was a provincial
outpost. "We played the case harder," Asbury would declare, "than any
Hearst paper had ever played such a case anywhere."

By the time the Georgian hit the streets Monday, it was too late for the
Constitution to recover. Only 24 hours earlier, the morning paper had
owned the Phagan story, but now it belonged to Hearst. Even the Geor-
gian's straight news pieces were better— not that this was so surprising. To
practice the sort of journalistic cubism preferred by Hearst, a newspaper-
man first had to master the just-the-facts approach. To distort, one had to
report, and this the Georgian's hardened veterans did. All of which left the
Constitution in a bad position. While the sheet scored a couple of coups—
among them a family snapshot of little Mary strolling beneath her umbrella
and an X-marks-the-spot photo of the corner of the factory basement
where the body had been discovered— it otherwise paled in comparison,
devoting just a column and a half to the murder on its front page and only
three columns inside.

In its first Monday edition, the Journal published less on the crime than
the Constitution, but by late afternoon, it had rallied. The Journal's editors
topped the front page of their final edition with a four-column picture of
Mary Phagan— bows in her hair, eyes sparkling— that presented the girl as
the embodiment of Southern womanhood. Additionally, they ran a shot of
the pencil factory building with cutouts showing where the body had been
found and an inset offering an enlarged view of the sliding back door. They
also ran a photograph of one of the murder notes that Harold Ross had
"borrowed" Sunday morning.

Yet for all of that, the Journal's performance faded when compared
to any edition of the Georgian. The afternoon paper simply didn't have
the goods. "They couldn't verify half the Georgian's stories sufficiently
to rewrite them for subsequent editions," noted Asbury. Not that the Jour-
nal didn't try to rewrite the Georgian. Beneath the headline "god's

VENGEANCE WILL STRIKE BRUTE WHO KILLED HER," SAYS GRANDFATHER

EXTRA, EXTRA 45

of mary phagan, the paper published a toned-down version of Asbury's
article about William Jackson Phagan. But it wasn't the same. Gone was the
roaring train. Gone were the tears running down the old man's face. And
gone was the rain. What was left— like most of what ran in the Journal—
was factual, but for now the facts weren't selling. On this April Monday,
Atlanta had surrendered to William Randolph Hearst.

FOUR

Onward, Christian Soldiers

Bi

etween 6:30 and 7:00 on Monday morning, just as the Georgian's
first extra was rolling off the presses, an 18-year-old National Pencil
Company machinist named R. P. Barrett noticed a suspicious
red spot on the factory's metal department floor near a women's dressing
room some twenty feet from Mary Phagan's workstation. Fan-shaped, four
or five inches in diameter and haloed by a few smaller crimson spatterings,
the spot appeared to be blood. Additionally, it seemed as if someone had
tried to hide it. "It looked like some white substance had been wiped over
it," Barrett would later testify. "It looked like it had been smeared with a
coarse broom." Whether this substance was potash or a soapy lubricant
called Haskoline— both of which were stored nearby— Barrett couldn't
determine, but after a janitor told him that neither the spot nor the white
grease had been there Friday afternoon, he summoned Lemmie Quinn, a
foreman, who in turn notified the police.

With that, Barrett prepared to start his day. At quitting time Friday, he
had left a piece of unfinished work in a bench lathe that faced the metal
department wall about ten feet past the dead girl's machine. Powered by
pulleys that descended from the ceiling, the lathe was controlled by an
L-shaped steel handle that extended at a right angle from its front edge.
When Barrett turned the handle, he observed something more startling
than the red spot— six or eight strands of auburn hair that he would swear
weren't "there on Friday, for I had used that machine up to 5:30." Once
again, he alerted Quinn.

By now, the plant had begun to fill with workers, and many flocked to the
scene of Barrett's discoveries. Soon, Detective John Starnes and several
officers appeared, trailed by a gaggle of reporters. As the crowd looked on,
14-year-old Magnolia Kennedy, a metal department employee, tiptoed to
the lathe, stared intently and exclaimed: "It's Mary's hair. I know it."

Hard upon the Kennedy girl's pronouncement came another dramatic
verdict, this one from a more authoritative figure— Police Chief James
Litchfield Beavers. Testifying to the thrall in which the crime held Atlanta,
the chief had come to the factory to assure himself —and the city— that the
investigation was progressing. After an officer chipped up several pieces of

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 47

the red-stained floor, Beavers pulled a bottle of alcohol from his pocket and
submitted one of the specimens to a rudimentary test. When the discol-
oration did not dissolve as it would have had it been oil or paint, when it in
fact turned scarlet, he announced that it was blood.

Thus the idea that Mary Phagan had been attacked on the factory's sec-
ond floor took hold at the outset. The Georgian gave the theory its unqual-
ified blessing, reporting that "blood stains leading from the lathe showed
the manner in which the fiend had dragged the body of his victim to the
basement." So, too, did the more sober Journal, which proclaimed that
"investigations [this] morning proved that Mary Phagan was murdered
in the metal room and that her body was lowered in the elevator to the
basement."

At the very hour the police and the press were determining that Mary Pha-
gan had been slain in the general vicinity of Leo Frank's office, another
group of detectives was pursuing the man who at this juncture appeared to
be the best suspect— a recently discharged pencil company bookkeeper
named James Milton Gantt.

The detectives' suspicions regarding Gantt— a Marietta native who'd
been reared in the same Sardis section where little Mary had spent her
early childhood— had been whetted by a report that the 26-year-old book-
keeper was enamored of the girl. Among the sources for this information
were several of the factory's female laborers, day watchman E. F. Holloway
and evidently Leo Frank. More crucial, however, was the news that Gantt
had appeared at the plant Saturday at six p.m. just as Newt Lee and Frank
were locking up. After advising the superintendent— who'd fired him when
the factory cash box had tallied $2 short a few weeks earlier— that he'd left
two pairs of shoes upstairs, Gantt had been granted admittance to the
building, where he'd remained some twenty minutes, phoning an unidenti-
fied woman before emerging with his size elevens. Detectives had actually
begun looking for Gantt on Sunday, but it wasn't until Monday morning,
when he was spotted leaving a bar across the street from the plant, that they
caught a break. While Gantt managed to board a Marietta-bound trolley
before officers closed in, they alerted the Cobb County sheriff, and around
noon Deputy J. B. Hicks arrested him.

Gantt— who when apprehended was reportedly carrying a suitcase
packed for a long trip— was rushed back to Atlanta, where he informed
detectives that though he had dropped by the factory Saturday evening, he
was home in bed by ten p.m. and hadn't seen Mary Phagan in weeks. Yet
according to Gantt's sister, with whom he roomed and to whom the officers
had already spoken, the bookkeeper hadn't been home in nearly a month.

48 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Mrs. F. C. Terrell told the police that she'd actually been worried about her
brother because she'd not received a single letter from him during the
period. Gantt's alibi seemingly destroyed, the investigators began to weave
circumstances into theory, the theory being that the bookkeeper had mur-
dered the girl sometime during the day Saturday, then used his six p.m. visit
to the plant to recruit Newt Lee to hide her body. Late Monday afternoon,
according to the Constitution, "a squad of detectives and criminal experts
pulled off their coats, rolled their sleeves, and prepared for a determined
siege, which they vowed would not end until they had been convinced that
Gant [sic] was either guilty or innocent."

It was while R. P. Barrett was making his discoveries and the officers were
searching for James Gantt that Detective John Black, accompanied by a
young investigator named B. B. Haslett, reappeared at Leo Frank's home to
escort the factory superintendent back downtown. Though this second
encounter between Black and Frank was less tense than the first— the
detectives waited patiently while Frank ate breakfast— Black was no more
forthcoming regarding the purpose of the visit. In fact, as the men walked
into the city, strolling east on Georgia Avenue, north on Capitol, then east
on Decatur toward police headquarters at 175 Decatur, Black was as taci-
turn as ever. In response to Frank's persistent queries, Haslett finally
replied: "Well, Newt Lee has been saying something."

What Newt Lee— during the course of several Sunday-night and early-
Monday-morning sweatings— had been saying was that when he'd arrived
at work on Saturday at four p.m. just as Frank had instructed on Friday, the
superintendent had anxiously ordered him away. "He was rubbing his
hands," Lee would later tell the coroner's inquest. "He told me to go back
out in town and not to get back later than six o'clock." Newt said he'd
answered that he would rather curl up in the building and take a nap but
Frank had objected, hustling him off with the words: "Go out and have a
good time." Just before six, Newt had returned, followed closely by Gantt,
whose appearance had further upset Frank. According to Lee, the superin-
tendent had been reluctant to let the dismissed bookkeeper inside, inform-
ing him that his shoes had been swept out by the janitor— a contention that
was quickly disproved. At seven, Lee said, Frank had phoned him from
home to ask if things were all right. It was, he added, the first time his boss
had ever called him.

Not that Haslett was going to tell Frank any of this. "Chief Lanford will
tell you when you get down there," he responded when the factory superin-
tendent continued to press him, and the group marched on in silence.

Once the men reached the station house, they headed to the third-floor

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 49

offices of Newport Lanford, but the detective chief had gone out. So for the
next hour, Frank waited in an anteroom, talking with various officers.
About 9:30, Herbert Haas, of counsel to the pencil company, and Sig Mon-
tag appeared. And at 10:00, Luther Rosser, the lawyer to Atlanta's corpo-
rate elite and the new partner of governor-elect John Slaton, arrived.
Rosser's presence was interpreted by many as an indication that Mister Sig
believed Frank to be in serious straits, but there was also another explana-
tion. Haas's wife was expecting, and he'd evidently asked his colleague, who
occasionally handled some of the pencil company's affairs, to back him up
in case he needed to make a sudden departure.

"Hello boys, what's the trouble?" Rosser inquired by way of greeting,
whereupon Haas began explaining. During this huddle, Lanford returned,
beckoned Frank into his office and shut the door.

Though the detective chief and the superintendent were alone for just a
few seconds, it was time enough for Rosser to take umbrage.

Standing at six feet and weighing 220 pounds with a massive, balding
snapping turtle of a head, 53-year-old Luther Rosser was the embodiment
of Atlanta's fierce moneyed might. An old hand at the game of badgering
and buffeting who discarded all rules laid down by polite society and was
thus of great utility to polite society, Rosser was uncowed, unbowed and
unrepentant. Even in matters of dress, he was obstinate, usually appearing
before the bar— and everywhere else, for that matter— sans cravat. Friends
viewed his refusal to wear a tie as a harmless idiosyncracy. In a story still
told years later, his grandson delighted in recalling that Rosser wouldn't
make an exception when arguing a case before the United States Supreme
Court. ("If it's clothes they want," he reportedly roared at a fellow lawyer
prior to a joint appearance before the high tribunal, "you give it to them. If
it's law they want, I'll give it to them.") Yet Rosser's disdain for neckwear
was no mere quirk. It was, instead, a defining gesture, the adamant signature
of an adamant soul.

In brief, no detective chief was going to shut a door in Rosser's face, and
following Frank's disappearance, he flew into a rage, bellowing to a guard:
"I am going into that room. That man is my client." Soon thereafter, Lan-
ford admitted the lawyer, but he would not forget the outburst. In fact, he
would always wonder why Rosser had thrown a fit on behalf of someone
who at this point had not been charged with anything.

The sequence in which events unfolded in Lanford's office was never
made clear, but early on, Frank handed Lanford Newt Lee's time slip— the
card the superintendent had initialed Sunday morning after a glance indi-
cated the night watchman had clocked in at all the appropriate intervals.
Then, Frank made a stunning announcement: After studying the slip more
carefully, he said, he'd realized that his first assessment had been wrong.

50 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Lee had actually missed three punches, meaning that on three occasions
between 6 p.m. Saturday and 3 a.m. Sunday, the night watchman's where-
abouts could not be accounted for.

On the heels of this astonishing about-face, the chief, believing any sub-
sequent revelations should be part of the sworn record, asked Frank if he
would make a statement, to which Rosser assented. Accordingly, the super-
intendent sat down at a table across from the detective department's secre-
tary, a mustachioed notary public named C. Gay February.

Frank's deposition took the form of a straightforward chronology of his
version of the events of Saturday, April 26. He reiterated that he'd been
alone in his office when Mary Phagan "came in between 12:05 and 12:10,
maybe 12:07, to g et h er pay envelope," adding: "I paid her and she went out
of the office. It was impossible to see the direction she went in when she left.
My impression was that she just walked away. I didn't pay any particular
attention." At 1:10, he said he'd decided to go to lunch, but since he in-
tended to bolt the Forsyth Street door (making ingress to or egress from the
factory impossible), he had to alert two laborers— Arthur White and Harry
Denham— who were on the fourth floor servicing some equipment. White's
wife, who'd dropped by to visit, was with the men. As a consequence, he said
he'd dashed upstairs. After White and Denham told him they weren't done,
he'd agreed to let them remain in the locked-up plant. Immediately there-
after, Mrs. White exited, and he followed. At 3:00, he said, he'd returned to
find White and Denham almost finished. At 3:15, the workers clocked out,
although he recalled that White had ducked into the office and asked for a
$2 loan. He said he'd responded: "What's the matter; we just paid off."
When the worker replied that his wife had "robbed him," he said he'd given
him the money.

Now came the part Frank's auditors were awaiting, the part about which
Lee had been talking:

On Friday night I told [Newt] after I give him the keys, "You had better
come around early tomorrow because I may go to the ball game" [the
Atlanta Crackers were playing the Nashville Vols at 4 p.m. at Ponce de
Leon Park], and he come early because of that fact. I told him to come
early, and he came 20 minutes to 4. 1 figured I could leave about 1 o'clock
and would not come back, but it was so cold I didn't want to risk catching
cold [at the game] and I come back to the factory as I usually do. He come
in and I said, "Newt, you are early," and he said, "Yes, sir," ... I told him he
could go out; he got there so early and I was going to be there.

From here, Frank shifted seamlessly to the other critical topic, the 6 p.m.
encounter with the discharged bookkeeper:

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 51

When I went out, talking to Newt Lee was J. M. Gantt, a man I had fired
about two weeks previous. Newt told me he wanted to go up to get a pair of
shoes he left while he was working there, and Gantt said to me, "Newt
don't want me to go up," and he said, "You can go with me, Mr. Frank," and
I said, "That's all right, go with him Newt," and I went on home, and I got
home about 6:25. Nothing else happened; that's all I know ... I tried to
telephone [Newt] when I got home [but] I didn't get an answer ... at
7 o'clock ... I called him and asked him if Gantt got his shoes and he said
yes, he got them, and I said is everything all right and he said yes, and the
next thing I knew they called me at 7:30 the next morning.

To the police officers, Frank's recounting seemed at once mystifyingly
detailed and frustratingly vague. They pressed him to clarify certain facts.
"Why, it's preposterous," interceded Luther Rosser. "A man who would
have done such a deed must be full of scratches and marks and his clothing
must be bloody." Whereupon the superintendent stood and stripped. As
Frank would later describe it:

I . . . showed them my underclothing and my top shirt and my body, I bared
it to them all that came within the range of their vision. I had everything
open to them, and all they had to do was to look and see it.

Frank's torso was, indeed, unblemished. But his lawyers didn't believe
the display convinced the lawmen. Hoping to vanquish all doubts, Herbert
Haas urged Frank to take John Black and B. B. Haslett to his home and let
them examine the laundry. So around noon, the group returned to Georgia
Avenue. At the house, the men trooped upstairs to Leo and Lucille 's bed-
room. There, Frank dumped the contents of his laundry bag onto the bed,
then stood aside as the detectives pawed "every article of clothing that I
had discarded that past week." Finding no bloodstains, Black and Haslett
departed and Frank, feeling that they were satisfied, joined Lucille and her
parents in the parlor. Soon the Negro cook, Minola McKnight, served din-
ner, and life resumed its familiar rhythms.

Though calm may have returned to 68 East Georgia Avenue Monday after-
noon, at the Decatur Street headquarters of the Atlanta police, pandemo-
nium reigned, and it had little to do with hair and blood samples, fired
bookkeepers or Leo M. Frank. Now that the news of Mary Phagan's death
had been widely broadcast, now that the scent of reward money was in the
air, everyone, it seemed, was advancing a solution to the crime. As the Geor-
gian— failing to acknowledge its role in fomenting the chaos— described

52 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

the situation: "All day was a ceaseless procession going into the detectives'
offices and another coming out. The officers were harrassed as much as they
were aided."

Most of the tipsters arrived bearing variations of two related and much
publicized theories— the tall, thin man scenario advanced by Edgar Sentell
and the reeling, drug-addled girl scenario advanced by E. S. Skipper. Char-
lie Hall, director of the city sanitation department's motor division, said
he'd seen a girl being dragged along Forsyth Street on Saturday night by a
tall, thin man. R. B. Pyron, a telegraph operator, said he'd seen a sobbing
girl in a touring car stopped at a downtown railroad crossing at roughly the
same hour. John R. Phillips, the manager of a Forsyth Street hotel, said a
man who resembled James Gantt had tried to register at his establishment
that evening in the company of an underage girl. Most dramatic, an uniden-
tified man said he'd observed a woman and two men mistreat a crying girl
near the pencil plant late Saturday. The woman had reportedly told the girl:
"Come along dearie, don't create a scene. You'll attract the cops." To which
the girl had reportedly replied: "I don't care. I don't care."

Even at the time, many of these leads must have been recognizable as
manifestations of either communal shell shock or Hearst-induced avarice,
yet none of them could be discounted and some were compelling. The hotel
manager who said he had turned away the couple on Saturday evening had
come forward only after checking at Bloomfield's mortuary to assure him-
self that the body lying in state belonged to the young lady who'd called at
his concern.

As report after report flowed into the station house, detectives began
seriously entertaining the notion that Mary Phagan, after receiving her pay
Saturday afternoon, had been accosted on Atlanta's streets, if not by an
acquaintance such as Mullinax or Gantt, then by some as yet unidentified
man who'd used drugs to seduce her or by so-called white slavers who lured
girls into prostitution. As the Journal reported: "Police are making two ran-
dom investigations: One is that Mary Phagan was the victim of a white slave
plot. The other is that she was taken for an automobile ride before her mur-
der and was drugged or made drunk."

How officers hoped to reconcile either of these possibilities with the
clues they'd thus far accumulated is uncertain. At this point, the case lay
before them in dozens of pieces, none of which fit together. If, as the police
suspected, Mary Phagan had been waylaid on the streets of Atlanta, why
had her assailant brought her back to the pencil factory's second floor to
kill her? If, as Mullinax's girlfriend was now maintaining, young Arthur had
spent Saturday night with her, why was Edgar Sentell so certain he'd seen
the ex-streetcar conductor squiring little Mary along Forsyth Street that
evening? The reverse of this question could be asked about Gantt. If, as

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 53

the bookkeeper swore, he was home in bed at the time, why would his
sister contend she hadn't seen him in a month? As for Newt Lee, the Jour-
nal flatly declared: "The police place no belief in his protestations of inno-
cence." Then there was Leo Frank, whose behavior on Sunday morning had
seemed overly agitated, whose change of heart regarding Lee's time slip
provoked skepticism and whose account of his Saturday activities also
inspired doubts. And as for the murder notes, all anyone could say about
them was summed up in a Georgian headline: "Strange Notes Increase
Mystery." No wonder that come Hiesday, the Constitution would report:
"All day Monday, detectives worked diligently for evidence which would
throw light upon the killing, and when night came they were baffled."

The headquarters of the Atlanta Police Department dominated a section of
Decatur Street lined by pawnshops whose Russian Jewish proprietors lived
upstairs or in the rear, wagon yards crowded with mule carts and swarming
with raw-boned old boys just in from the hills, Chinese laundries, tintype
studios, Irish near-beer saloons, Greek pastry shops, Italian delicatessens
boasting such delectable fare that they were frequented each season by the
Met's visiting stars and— most ubiquitously— fish markets and grills that
catered solely to Negroes and lent the byway its piscatory cognomen: Mul-
let Avenue. In 1913, this thoroughfare, if not as legendary as Peachtree
Street, was much more vibrant, the throbbing aorta that pulsed the blood of
every race, class and creed into the burgeoning capital of the New South. As
a writer for the Journal magazine described it:

Decatur Street is a kaleidoscope of light, noise and bustle from dawn to
dawn. No hour is too early for the fish and "hot dogs" to be sold, or for a
dusky thief to pawn a watch or dispose of a little "blind tiger" [illegal
whisky]; no time too late for a black mammy to buy a red cotton dress or a
Jew to auction off ten pairs of number twelve shoes . . . Here, bearded
mountaineers . . . brush shoulders with laborers fresh from the Old Coun-
try .. . The Yankee spieler cries his wares and the Confederate veteran
buys 'em, and through it all negroes, yellow, black and brown thread their
laughing, shiftless way, types of the south which could be seen in no other
city in the land in all their native picturesqueness. Decatur Street is the
melting pot of Dixie.

The station house building, an immense Victorian-Gothic affair erected
in 1893, consisted of two three-story redbrick wings radiating from a seven-
story central tower that emerged from an arched marble portal and bulked
upward toward an observation deck surrounded by columns and guarded

54 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

by gargoyles. For a department that was at once righteous yet rascally, mor-
alizing yet draconian, there could have been no more fitting home.

Just as Atlanta's other municipal services— especially those regulating
public health and sanitation— were unprepared for the many problems bred
by the city's emergence as a metropolis, so, too, was its police department.
With few exceptions, the squad's 313 members were country boys who had
received no formal training. (Until 1931, recruits were issued a badge,
revolver, blackjack and Sam Brown belt and, after a week of instruction,
became full-fledged policemen.) Similarly, the force was ill-equipped and
essentially unmotorized. Chief Beavers was chauffeured around in a lim-
ousine and a motorcycle division had been formed, but by day officers
patrolled on horseback, by night on bicycle. The force did employ a Bertillon
technician (an expert in the archaic system that used skull and hand meas-
urements for identification purposes), but it had yet to invest in a fingerprint
lab. Perhaps most tellingly, the department maintained no precincts in out-
lying districts, relying instead on a network of "lockboxes" for warehousing
prisoners who couldn't be readily transported downtown. These hexagonal
cast-iron booths— freezing in winter, sweltering in summer— were located
in all parts of the city and called to mind nothing so much as the pillories of
Salem Common.

Exacerbating the force's operational shortcomings was a department-
wide predisposition to brutality. Much of the violence was directed at
Negroes. (In 1915, the force arrested 11,787 blacks as opposed to just 5,486
whites). Since 1909, the police had beaten at least one Negro to death, and
since 191 1, they had failed to solve the murders of seventeen Negro
women. (Since 1900, it must be added, three officers had been killed in the
line of duty by black toughs.)

Had the Atlanta Police Department been merely befuddled by change,
its men merely inclined to pistol-whip the random Negro wrongdoer, it
would be misleading to dwell on these failings, for in 19 13, most other big-
city law enforcement agencies were just as mired in the past, just as mean
and, in the South, just as hostile to blacks. Yet the force was also plagued by
another demon: institutional corruption.

One particular incident had exposed Detective Chief Newport A. Lan-
ford and his officers to damning scrutiny and would cast an instructional
light on the techniques they brought to bear in the Phagan case. On a
November night in 19 10, Detective Robert A. Wood, believing himself to
be unobserved, attacked one Ivan Wimbush east of headquarters. After
knocking Wimbush, who was white and had done nothing illegal but was
regarded around the station house as a disreputable character, to the
ground, Wood clubbed him across the face, drew his pistol and crouched as
if preparing to fire. How far the detective intended to go is unknown,

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 55

although Wimbush later swore that Wood would have killed him had not
two bystanders interceded. While the detective termed these Samaritans
"rounders," they were in actuality reporters, one from the Journal, the other
from the Constitution, and as it turned out they'd seen everything and were
still watching during the booking procedure at headquarters when Wood
again hit Wimbush, this time under the unblinking gaze of a captain and
two patrolmen.

For all its ugliness, the Wimbush beating probably would not have cre-
ated a stir had it not been for what happened afterward. At first, only Wood
and several others were involved in the cover-up, falsifying an attempted
murder charge against their prisoner, then seeking a high bail in order to
keep him out of sight. But the judge who conducted the preliminary hearing,
having received reports of what had transpired, dismissed the allegations,
reprimanded Wood and demanded an investigation. At which point, as the
Georgian phrased it, "the [full] machinery of the police department" was put
to work. With Newport Lanford's knowledge, C. Gay February, the secretary
who would take Leo Frank's statement, concocted an affidavit asserting that
the Journal and Constitution reporters were not present during the attack.
Numerous officers signed the document. Meanwhile, a statement attesting
to Wimbush's bad character was also prepared and forwarded to a prosti-
tute for her signature.

Not surprisingly, Atlanta's newspapers soon exposed the goings-on, and
after a week of headlines, the city's police commission convened a hearing.
At this session, the men who'd signed the false affidavits confessed, the
captain and patrolmen who'd stood by while Wimbush was beaten were
disciplined and Wood was suspended. Chief Lanford avoided punishment,
although a year later, editorial writers were still demanding his head. In
response, the detective chief— with a bravura suggesting he'd lined up
assurances from on high— called for an investigation, and the police com-
mission appointed what would be dubbed the "whitewash committee." In
August 191 1, Lanford was exonerated. Lamented the Constitution: "The
investigating committee was made up of members who are evidently ready
to give the detective department a clean bill of health, without even a per-
functory inquiry."

In the wake of the Wimbush incident, it's small wonder that Atlantans
could often be heard to say that the police "could frame up anything on
you." Yet the force's savage predilections— evident as they would become
in the Phagan investigation— were, in truth, on the wane, retreating under
the onslaughts of a new puritanical regime that sought to rid the city of vice
and make it a paragon of municipal virtue. The department's moralizing
angels, in short, were ascendant, and they would exert as powerful an influ-
ence on the Phagan probe as their darker twin.

56 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

To understand how the Atlanta police force became a regiment of Chris-
tian soldiers and how Chief James L. Beavers— a dapper man who shaded
his fine nose and neatly clipped mustache beneath the brim of a smart blue
kepi— became a fierce and terrible archangel, one must first understand
that since Reconstruction, Atlanta had boasted the most raffish houses of
prostitution south of New York or east of New Orleans and that they'd
operated with the consent of the police and to the financial benefit of top
city officials.

At least fifty in number, the majority of these brothels were located in a
neighborhood known as the "restricted district" on Mechanic Street west of
the ornate towers of Atlanta's principal port of entry— Terminal Train Sta-
tion. This section's overlord was a dashing rogue named Charles C. Jones.
Typically identified in the papers as a "sporting man," Jones navigated eas-
ily among Atlanta's elite. He owned the Rex, an elegant establishment snug
against Peachtree Street's Candler Building. There, amid the crack of pool
balls, the city's tippling businessmen discussed politics and deals. In a sense,
the Rex was Jones's cover, not that he made any secret of his other line of
merchandise. Everybody knew, and while not everybody approved, anyone
who protested would risk insulting Jones's benefactor— Atlanta mayor
Jimmy Woodward.

Jones and Woodward were, at first blush, unlikely allies. While the suave
Jones was a friend of the mighty, Woodward was a devoted union man, an
ex-printer who had risen through ward politics to the mayor's office in 1898.
In subsequent years, he'd been reelected, defeated and in 1912 reelected
again. Woodward, however, had a weakness: he was a falling-down drunk.
Since 1900, reports of Woodward's jags, which tended to occur in public and
feature bawdy ladies, had become a staple in Atlanta's newspapers, and
while the voters had been tolerant, the mayor had tried their souls. As a
columnist for a North Georgia weekly observed after one of Woodward's
benders prompted hearings: "It seems that Atlanta's mayor— Mr. Wood-
ward—has been having a high old time in that city, judging from the testi-
mony given against him during the investigation, getting drunk and making
calls on lewd women. Very nice rooster for a mayor."

The restricted district did not depend solely on the mayor's largesse.
Some police officers received payoffs to look the other way. More impor-
tant, numerous disinterested Atlanta judges, doctors and editors believed
the district performed a vital function. As the Georgian observed: "There
are many who say that [if] women are driven from a 'regulated' and super-
vised restricted district [they] will drift into residence districts and good
citizens will be living next door to disreputable resorts and in the same
apartment houses with objectionable characters without knowing it until
the disorder becomes flagrant." In short, the district was a necessary evil,

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 57

a bulwark against those goatish demons that if not exorcised by fallen
women would spend themselves beneath respectable roofs.

There was, of course, dissenting opinion, most of it originating along
moral lines but some of it arising from a growing awareness that the women
who worked in the district came primarily from poor families and that their
subjugation by the likes of Charles G Jones was the final indignity in a
process that began when they were dislocated from the good earth and
forced to toil in factories. In the Men and Religion Forward Committee, this
position had found its champion. The group, which included not only Bible-
thumping jackdaws but high-church divines and wealthy capitalists (princi-
pally John J. Eagan, owner of the American Cast Iron and Pipe Company of
Birmingham, and Marion Jackson, an Atlanta lawyer), had been looking for
a way, in one member's words, "to join with others in bringing the power of
the gospel to bear upon the active personal and social troubles of [the]
community." In February 191 2, Jackson and Eagan had attended a conven-
tion of like-minded souls in New York. There, the men had heard the fiery
activist Jane Addams— author, mistress of Chicago's Hull House and the
most influential social worker of the day— address the evils of prostitution
and the economic causes underlying it. Suddenly, the path became clear.

On June 15, 1912, Atlanta's Men and Religion Forward Committee inau-
gurated its campaign against "The Houses in Our Midst." The campaign
took the form of prominent weekly ads in all of the city's newspapers. The
ads challenged citizens to shut down the restricted district, pointing out the
links between the vice lords and the politicians ("Woodwardism," the pox
was termed) and citing figures showing that prostitution spread venereal
disease to wives and unborn children.

By mid-September, the campaign against "The Houses In Our Midst,"
while prompting the formation of a special vice committee, had produced
no results. The restricted district was so insulated that when the vice com-
mittee—a member of which was said to own one of the brothels— issued its
report, it didn't acknowledge that the district even existed. Yet far from
being discouraged, the Men and Religion Forward Committee stepped up
its attacks. Soon, a drawing of a gorilla wearing a visored police cap labeled
"Protected Vice," wielding a billy club labeled "Public Indifference," and
clutching a naked young girl against his hairy thigh began topping the ads.
The illustration— captioned "The White Slave"— was, considering its pur-
pose, oddly alluring. The swell of the child's bosom and the curvature of her
bottom could just as easily have spoken to the satyr as to the prig. But the
message was plain enough not to be lost on its intended audience: Chief
James Litchfield Beavers.

The Men and Religion Forward Committee knew its man. At 47, the
slightly built Beavers was equal parts bluenose and warrior. Known to

58 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

friends as "Litch," he had been raised a pious Presbyterian in Clayton
County a few miles south of Atlanta. A 23-year department veteran, he'd
worked his way up from patrolman to sergeant to captain. Only Wood-
wardism had slowed his steady climb. Referring broadly to the setback, the
Georgian noted: "When the Woodward administration went into office,
heads were lopped off freely. Sergeant Beavers went back in the ranks."
Beavers's rise, however, had merely been delayed, and during one of Wood-
ward's descents into the bottle, he'd resumed his ascent, becoming chief in
1911.

On the morning of September 24, 1912, Beavers sent out notices giving
landlords of the houses in Atlanta's midst five days to shut down and pros-
titutes an equal amount of time to vacate. Reported the Georgian: "The
action of Chief Beavers came with the suddenness of a thunderclap, and its
effect was cyclonic."

By the next day, Atlanta was in an uproar. On the one hand, the district's
advocates were furious. Jimmy Woodward, campaigning for reelection,
declared: "It was a bad mistake to scatter those people over the city in
respectable neighborhoods. The social evil question should be handled with
good common sense, not fanaticism." Yet members of the Men and Reli-
gion Forward Committee were ecstatic, amending that day's "Houses in
Our Midst" ad to proclaim: "Thank God for a man who dares to do his duty.
The credit should be given to Chief Beavers." Soon, clergymen were can-
vasing the restricted district, offering girls opportunities to make an "honest
living" and boasting of a $10,000 fund set up for that purpose. Meanwhile,
Charles C. Jones was also touring the neighborhood, distributing $100 bills
to his madams and brandishing a list of alleged brothels in other parts of
town that he claimed had been ignored by Beavers because they paid graft
to the police.

That a deadly battle had been joined became apparent two days after the
crackdown when a madam named Nellie Busby was found in one of the dis-
trict's houses with a knife plunged into her heart. "Dramatic Suicide Marks
Clean-Up," boomed the headline, yet the woman's demise was suspicious.
Not only did officers discover an untouched meal and an unopened bottle
of beer sitting on the table in her room, but by her body, they found a note
that challenged all credulity:

This is the end. They have ordered me to close my house, and I have
nowhere to go. I might as well die . . . Tell Chief B. to go to hell. He's the
cause of this.

Who killed Nellie Busby was a mystery, yet the answer to the question of
why was obvious— money. Just how lucrative the houses in Atlanta's midst

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 59

were is uncertain, but in a city whose railroads poured thousands of
salesmen into Terminal Station daily, such a business surely produced a
windfall— and the women were only part of it. Since 1908, when Georgia
outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages, Atlanta had been dry. While bar-
keeps could sell near-beer, no one could legally sell whisky. (No one, that is,
except proprietors of licensed locker clubs, which usually catered to the rich
and included such elegant dives as the Piedmont Driving Club.) There
were, however, myriad illegal "blind tigers." Generally, these speakeasies
took the form of back rooms frequented by Negroes and crackers. Yet they
also included the restricted district's houses. Charles C. Jones was both
whoremaster and bootlegger. So while members of the Men and Religion
Forward Committee may have viewed Beavers as a crusader, men like
Jones viewed him as a threat to a distillery of illicit profits, and they would
not have shed a tear had Nellie Busby's death been laid at his doorstep.

Oddly enough, one of the few Atlantans who stood above the fray was
the one who started it— Chief Beavers. In interviews, he was relaxed and
confident. "I'm enforcing the law, that's all," he told reporters. "The law
plainly says that such places shall not exist. I intend to wipe them out." If
Charles Jones defied him, he vowed to lead demolition teams into the dis-
trict and raze it. Thanks to the support of the Men and Religion Forward
Committee, Beavers believed he could back up such talk. And he could.
Within the allotted period, the houses of Mechanic Street were shuttered.

The effects of Beavers's action were immense but contradictory. The
most immediate beneficiary was the chief himself. By the time of Mary Pha-
gan's murder, he was among the most visible law enforcement officials in
America. At the 1913 convention of the International Association of Police
Chiefs in Washington, D.C., Beavers delivered a much quoted address
detailing the interests he'd battled and boasting that in the months since the
district's demise, crime in Atlanta had decreased "fully one-third." Back
home, however, many remained skeptical. Not only had Woodward been
reelected over a pro-Beavers candidate, but the papers were brimming with
stories alleging that prostitutes had infested "good" neighborhoods. In a
widely reported incident, two preachers in town for a convention claimed
they were accosted ten times in one night by streetwalkers.

Yet despite such incidents, the Atlanta Police Department was generally
viewed as a crusading force that had stood up against vice. That this holy aura
had little more to do with justice than the disreputable practices for which
175 Decatur Street was also renowned was not a subject of much discussion.

Whatever confusion had paralyzed the Atlanta police on Monday regard-
ing the Phagan investigation had by late Tuesday morning been replaced by

60 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

a newfound certitude. Around 11:30, Detectives John Black and B. B.
Haslett arrested the man they were now convinced had committed the
crime— Leo Frank. The officers took Frank into custody at the pencil fac-
tory, giving him just enough time to grab a pocketful of cigars and say good-
bye to his employees, many of whom were in tears, before packing him into
the chiefs limousine and rushing him to headquarters. There, a mob of pho-
tographers and reporters was waiting. As he was being whisked inside,
Frank made a brief statement:

I am not guilty. Such an atrocious crime has never entered my mind. I am a
man of good character and I have a wife. I am a home-loving and God-
fearing man. They will discover that. It is useless to detain me, unless for
investigation and for information I might be able to give.

Then he disappeared into 175 Decatur Street.

The detectives' certitude had been born in an increasingly febrile envi-
ronment. Ibesday morning, the Constitution had upped the reward ante
and put Chiefs Beavers and Lanford on notice. In a biting editorial head-
lined $1,000 reward, the sheet declared:

The detective force and the entire police authority of Atlanta are on
probation in the detection and arrest of this criminal with proof. To justify
the confidence that is placed in them and the relation they are assumed to
hold toward law and order, they must locate this arch-murderer.

All Atlanta, shocked at a crime that has no local parallel in sheer horror
and barbarity, expects the machinery of the law to be sufficient to meet the
call made upon it. If ever the men who ferret out crime and uphold the law
in Atlanta are to justify their function it must be in apprehending the
assailant and murderer of Mary Phagan.

Fidelity to oath and pride of reputation should be sufficient incentive to
the detectives to insure their solution of this mystery, but as an added
incentive . . .

The Constitution offers $1,000 . • .

Not to be outdone, the Georgian saw the Constitution's bet and raised it,
sparking a fund drive that by midday had brought the reward total to
$1,800— $100 of which had been donated by none other than Charles C
Jones.

Meanwhile, in Marietta Ibesday morning, remarks made at Mary
Phagan's funeral— which the Georgian covered in an extra available on
Atlanta's streets almost instantaneously— put even more pressure on the
police. The ceremony was conducted in a weathered wood-frame Baptist

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 6l

church that perched atop a raw, red-clay bank. The Phagans— mother Fan-
nie, sister Ollie, brothers Joshua, Charlie and Benjamin and stepfather John
W. Coleman— were consumed by grief. Indeed, the family was so over-
wrought that pallbearers had to be picked at random on the grounds. As the
white, carnation-banked casket was carried in, the choir sang "Nearer My
God to Thee," and from that time on the incessant sound of muffled sob-
bing filled the air.

Yet for all the soulful lamentations, the obsequies were dominated by
cries for retribution. The Reverend T.T.G. Linkous, ordained in the hard-
shell Christian denomination and the Phagans' pastor during their years in
the little mill town of Eagan, prefaced his remarks by praying that "we may
not hold too much rancor in our hearts— we do not want vengeance." But
once the preacher caught fire, such pleas vanished in an eruption of sul-
phurous gustings:

We pray for the police and the detectives of the city of Atlanta. We pray
that they may perform their duty and bring the wretch that committed this
act to justice. We pray that the authorities apprehend the guilty party or
parties and punish them to the full extent of the law. Even that is too good
for the imp of Satan that did this. Oh, God, I cannot see how even the devil
himself could do such a thing. I believe in forgiveness. Yet I do not see how
it can be applied in this case. I pray that this wretch, this devil, be caught
and punished according to the man-made God-sanctioned laws of Georgia.

At the cemetery, the angry talk subsided. As the Reverend Linkous, him-
self now holding back tears, looked heavenward, the first shovelful of dirt
hit the casket and Mary's mother fell to her knees, crying: "Goodbye, Mary.
Goodbye. It's too big a hole to put you in. It's so big, and you were so little."

The Georgian, of course, retailed all these sad details, but it headlined
the most incendiary angle, the one aimed directly at 175 Decatur Street:

PASTOR PRAYS FOR JUSTICE AT GIRL'S FUNERAL.

No single development had persuaded Chiefs Beavers and Lanford that
Leo Frank had murdered Mary Phagan. Instead, to the cumulative weight
of Sunday's suspicions and Monday's misgivings had been added several
last factors that tipped the scales against the superintendent. First, by Tues-
day the police had all but dropped charges against two men who just the
day before had seemed prime suspects. One of them— handsome Arthur
Mullinax— had been the victim of a case of mistaken identity. Not only had
Mullinax's sweetheart provided her beau with a convincing alibi, but his
accuser had proved to be a myopic meddler. Edgar Sentell, who'd claimed
to have spotted Mullinax escorting Mary along Forsyth Street Saturday
night, had received a medical discharge from the navy three weeks earlier

62 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

due to poor eyesight. James M. Gantt had also been victimized by a mis-
leading source— his sister. Despite Mrs. F. C. Terrell's assertion that she
hadn't seen her brother in a month, he had, as he'd insisted, been home the
night of the crime. Frightened and according to her husband not well,
Gantt's sister, hoping to keep the family out of the matter, had lied to offi-
cers. Though vexing aspects of Gantt's story— his attraction to little Mary,
his Monday trip to Marietta— were left unresolved, he would soon be freed.

So two key suspects had been eliminated. But it wasn't the diminishing
of the ranks so much as what the diminishing suggested that had further
pointed the finger at Frank. It was now plain that reports placing Mary Pha-
gan on Atlanta's streets Saturday night were fictitious, that in truth, after
receiving her wages, she'd never left the pencil factory. Unless some new
figure appeared upon the stage, Frank was and would remain the last
person to admit having seen the girl alive.

Equally important in hardening the case against Frank had been a late-
Monday afternoon meeting at the National Pencil Company offices be-
tween Frank and assistant factory superintendent N. V. Darley and Harry
Scott, second in command of the Atlanta branch of the Pinkerton Detective
Agency.

Frank had arranged the get-together almost as soon as John Black and
B. B. Haslett had finished searching through his dirty laundry. He had
phoned a trusted coworker, assistant superintendent Herbert Schiff, and
instructed him to engage a private investigator, "preferably a Pinkerton
detective." Later, Frank would assert that his only motivation had been a
desire to "assist the city detectives in ferreting out the crime, as an evidence
of the interest in this matter which the National Pencil Company was tak-
ing." Frank's rationale may have been as stated, but measured against the
Pinkerton firm's reputation, it rang somewhat hollow. By 1913, the detec-
tive agency that had come to prominence protecting presidents and battling
black-hatted hombres had evolved into an ex-officio standing army for
American business. Supplier of strikebreakers and infiltrator of unions, the
firm specialized not so much in investigating crimes as in safeguarding
industry. The Pinkertons were just the people a company official hoping to
stave off scandal would have specified.

Yet where Frank may have harbored a hidden agenda, Scott brought
with him an undeniable conflict of interests. A college-educated Pennsyl-
vanian who before moving to Atlanta in 191 1 had worked in the agency's
Philadelphia branch, Scott was smooth-shaven, pudgy and could even have
been termed baby-faced were it not for his sharp nose and button eyes. But
while the 27-year-old detective looked the part of the archetypal Pinkerton
operative and thus the antithesis of the rough old cobs at headquarters, he

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 63

was closely tied to the police. Private investigators operating in the city
were required to submit duplicate copies of their reports to the depart-
ment, even if the documents implicated a client. This much Scott would
reveal to Frank. What he would not reveal, however, was that his allegiance
to the force went deeper than the statutes required, that indeed, one of his
best friends, someone with whom he often worked in tandem, was the indi-
vidual who from the outset had believed Frank guilty: Detective John
Black.

It would have been hard to find men at greater cross purposes than the
ones who'd sat across from each other Monday afternoon in Frank's office.
As Scott would later testify, Frank had opened the conversation by confid-
ing: "John Black [seems] to suspect me of the crime." That said, the superin-
tendent had repeated his version of events. Generally speaking, this was the
same narrative he'd given the police, but it did contain several new wrin-
kles, each of which had an influence on the investigation.

First, Frank— according to Scott's account— had gone out of his way
to implicate James Gantt. As the Pinkerton operative would subsequently
testify:

He [Frank] stated during our conversation that Gantt knew Mary Phagan
very well, that he was familiar and intimate with her. He seemed to lay spe-
cial stress on it at the time. He said that Gantt had paid a good deal of
attention to her.

To Scott, Frank's familiarity with Gantt's interest in little Mary raised a
troubling question: How could a man who on Sunday had told John Black
that he did not know the victim have by Monday become an expert on her
suitors?

Second, Frank had provided Scott with a newly discovered piece of
information: On the day of the crime, an unidentified Negro had been spot-
ted in the factory. As the superintendent would later put it:

I told him [Scott] something which Mr. Darley had that afternoon commu-
nicated to me, viz.: that Mrs. White had told him that on going into the fac-
tory at about 12 o'clock noon on Saturday, April 26th, she had seen some
negro down by the elevator shaft. Mr. Darley had told me this and I just
told it to Mr. Scott.

Scott would subsequently confirm that Frank had apprised him of this news,
but at the time, the Pinkerton man had either accorded it no importance
(he didn't mention it in his report) or deemed it inconvenient, and for

64 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

weeks, the possibility that an unknown party had been lurking in the build-
ing would go unexamined by the police.

Following an hour's discussion, Frank and Darley had given Scott the
grand tour. Through the metal department, down the scuttle hole, into the
basement, out the back door, up the alley and around to the Forsyth Street
entrance the three had walked. As darkness fell, they'd stood in front of the
building, discussing the Pinkerton Agency's rates. After agreeing on a deal,
Frank returned to 68 East Georgia Avenue for the last evening he'd ever
spend at home. As for Scott, it is uncertain where he passed Monday night,
but what is certain is that before he saw Frank again, he'd seen John Black
and that when Black and Haslett arrived at the factory to arrest Frank,
Scott was with them.

Of all the elements that had persuaded the detectives that Frank was the
culprit, however, none had been more important than the shifting view of
Newt Lee's role in the affair. By Ibesday morning, the police had pegged
the night watchman as both Frank's accomplice and his patsy.

As best as can be determined, the notion that Lee and Frank were in
cahoots had first been articulated late Monday by one of Newt's former
employers, T. Y. Brent. The police, hoping that Brent could help them bridge
the gap between the night watchman's denials of guilt and their certainty
that he had been involved, had allowed him to assist in quizzing Lee. Near
the interrogation's conclusion, Brent had experienced an epiphany:

"I know what's the trouble," Brent had exclaimed. "Someone you are
faithful to killed that girl. You know all about it. I wouldn't be surprised if
you didn't have a hand in it yourself. You don't want to tell because you
want to shield whoever murdered her. I'm going to tell you this— it's just a
question of loyalty or your neck. You can't keep but one."

" Yessir, Mr. Brent; that's a fact. I know that," Lee had replied.

[Lee's] lips were trembling and he shifted nervously. His questioners
waited eagerly for an expected confession. The negro checked himself and
recovered but the police are confident of their suspicion.

In a predawn grilling Ibesday, Detective John Black had revisited the
issue. "We know you did not do the murder," he had assured Lee. "We know
you are guiltless of the whole affair. But we know that you know exactly
who did it and that you are protecting that person."

Ibesday's Journal had intensified the detectives' need to make the
connection between Frank and Lee by linking Lee to the case's greatest
mystery— the authorship of the murder notes. The paper had engaged sev-
eral bank officials to study the missives. While none of these men were
trained experts, the Journal, taking its cues from the Georgian, had not let

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 65

such shortcomings stand in its way, unequivocally proclaiming in a front-
page screamer:

THREE HANDWRITING EXPERTS SAY
NEGRO WROTE THE TWO NOTES FOUND BY BODY OF GIRL

Beneath these lines, the sheet reported:

Through its own investigations the Atlanta Journal has proven conclu-
sively that Newt Lee, the negro night watchman for the National Pencil
company, either himself mistreated and murdered pretty Mary Phagan, or
that he knows who committed the crime and is assisting the perpetrator to
conceal his identity.

Locked in this negro's breast is the key to the murder mystery that has
shocked the entire south.

Dovetailing with the investigators' evolving theory that Lee was trying
to protect Frank was the simultaneously evolving theory that Frank was
trying to implicate Lee. This idea had first occurred to the police Monday
morning after the superintendent reversed himself regarding the punches
on Lee's time slip. But from there, it had gone underground, burrowing
through a maze of unknown influences, not emerging until late Tuesday
morning, minutes before Frank's arrest, when in one of the case's most
bizarre turns, Detective Black had located yet another critical and enig-
matic piece of evidence.

Around n a.m. Tuesday, Black had let himself into Newt Lee's apart-
ment at 40 Henry Street in a neighborhood near the Bellwood section where
the Phagan family resided. Lee lived alone in the back of a shotgun house
whose front rooms were occupied by several unrelated Negro tenants. In a
metal trash drum Lee had transformed into a wardrobe, the lawman found
an exceedingly suspicious item— a bloody linen shirt. The shirt was soaked
to the armpits, and from the beginning, everything about it had seemed
wrong. The goriest stains, for instance, were on the inside and appeared to
have been purposely applied, as if the shirt had been mopped over a
butcher's block. Moreover, the shirt looked freshly pressed, as if it had not
been worn in weeks. All of which, the detective subsequently claimed, led
him to conclude the shirt was a plant. Though Black never revealed how he
decided Frank had planted it, an officer of the court would later assert:

Frank was trying to point suspicion at Newt Lee ... He wanted his own
house searched so that when the officers had gone through it and nothing
had been found there, he could tell them to go and search Newt Lee's

66 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

house . . . this shirt was a plant and Frank's request was a ruse to get the
police to search his house and then Newt Lee's house and thus throw sus-
picion on the negro. The shirt was a part of the scheme.

Whether or not any of this was so, Black— after dropping the shirt off at
Decatur Street and intimating to the reporters gathered out front that there
had been a major break in the case— had picked up Haslett and Harry Scott
and raced to the factory.

Frank's arrest, then, was the culmination of a journey that after beginning
in the ambiguities of Sunday morning had proceeded along a road that
had only grown curiouser and curiouser. Yet just because the superintend-
ent was now in custody did not mean that the journey was at an end. In
fact, Frank was barely through the station house doors before Black and
Scott rushed him to Lanford's third-floor office. There, with Lanford and
Beavers looking on, the detectives produced a bundle of butcher's paper in
which they'd wrapped the just discovered shirt. Hoping to catch Frank off
guard, the men pulled out a tiny bit of the shirt— a sleeve or the tail— and
asked him if he recognized the fabric. As Frank subsequently recalled the
moment:

They showed me a little piece of material of some shirt, and asked me if I
had a shirt of that material. I looked at it and told them I didn't think I ever
had a shirt of that description.

The reaction to Frank's answer went unreported, but he wasn't the only one
subjected to the test. Presently Newt Lee was dragged in. After perusing the
fabric, Newt said it resembled that of one of his shirts, whereupon the law-
men ripped open the package, releasing, as Frank later put it, a "distinct
odor of blood," and Lee confirmed that the garment indeed belonged to
him.

Moments after Lee identified the shirt, a commotion broke out in the
stairwell leading to Lanford's office between an officer who'd been posted
on the steps with orders to let no one pass and Luther Rosser, who, upon
learning of Frank's arrest, had raced to Decatur Street. Forced to retreat to
the lobby and phone upstairs, the lawyer, once he'd been granted passage,
upbraided the man he held responsible.

"I've got my opinion of how a chief of police should conduct himself,"
Rosser snorted upon greeting Beavers. "I had a perfect right to be admitted
by that policeman downstairs. He told me he had orders to keep me down
from here. He even called me by my name."

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 67

"I've got my opinion, too, of how a police department should be run,"
Beavers fired back. "I did not give instructions to keep you from this office.
I ordered that the crowd be kept away." On that note, the clash— the second
in as many days between the police hierarchy and Frank's lawyer— ended.

When the interrogation resumed, Black ceded the floor to Scott, a turn
of events that was too much for Frank to bear. "You're acting mighty
funny," the superintendent snapped, expressing anger for the first time.
"You were hired by me, if you remember! Why should you ask me such
questions?"

To which Scott coolly responded: "I was put on the case by my superiors.
They were employed to catch the murderer. That was what I was instructed
to do. If you are the murderer, then it's my duty to convict you."

Near the end of the session, Lucille Frank— accompanied by her father
and her brother-in-law Alexander Marcus— arrived at the station house.
Denied admittance to Chief Lanford's office, the three were shown to a
lobby desk. There, they waited. While Lucille maintained her composure
long enough to express her belief in Leo's innocence to newsmen, she soon
broke down. Later, she would recollect:

I was humiliated and distressed by numerous people, maybe newspaper
reporters, maybe somebody else, snapshotting me with hand cameras. I
was besieged for interviews, and made thoroughly miserable in many ways.

At some point, word reached Frank that Lucille was downstairs "weeping
bitterly." Hoping, as he'd subsequently put it, to protect his wife from the
"humiliation and harsh sight" of seeing him under arrest, he sent a message
to her conveying his belief that he would soon be freed and asking her to
return home, which she did. Her visit, brief as it was, made the papers, but it
stuck in few memories. What was almost universally remembered, though,
was the fact that two weeks would pass before Lucille again visited her hus-
band.

Shortly after Lucille departed, the interrogation came to a halt, and
all involved spilled into the detectives' bullpen. According to the Jour-
nal, Rosser "made light of the evidence against his client," claiming that
the "police could hold him no longer than he, Mr. Rosser, was willing for
them to."

However, Detectives Black and Scott, talking to reporters on the other
side of the room, made it sound as if Frank would not be released anytime
soon. In joint remarks, the two flatly announced:

We have sufficient evidence to convict the murderers of Mary Phagan.The
mystery is cleared.

68 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Whereupon Frank, so nervous and agitated that he could not stand without
support, was led away.

As darkness fell, Black and Scott, their boasts notwithstanding, knew
there was much to be done. Though the detectives claimed they had the evi-
dence to convict, that was far from so. Somehow, they had to make the cases
against Frank and Lee mesh, or, barring that, firm up a case against one or
the other.

Initially, it was Lee upon whom the authorities exerted their powers of
persuasion. As yet unrepresented by counsel, exhausted after three days of
interrogation and terrified, old Newt was starting to wobble, and the detec-
tives—or, more precisely, their surrogates— went after him with the cruel
ingenuity Southern white men reserved for recalcitrant Negroes.

Sometime after sunset, one Francis E. Wright— a salesman who had no
connection to the case but believed himself to possess a knack for making
blacks open up— was admitted to Lee's cell. After identifying the visitor as
a minister, Detective Black and Agent Scott walked away, although along
with a Constitution reporter, they stayed in earshot.

"Newt," Wright began, "you haven't got long on this earth— only a few
days. They're going to get you. They've already got you. What little time
you've been allotted for life, you'd better put to good advantage."

With that, Wright implored Lee to talk:

There isn't but one thing to do. Tell all you know and cleanse your soul. If
you die with a lie on your lips, you'll drop straight to perdition.

Wright paused, then produced the texts with which he intended to in-
duce a confession. The first was a copy of an extra the Georgian had pub-
lished late in the afternoon topped by a page-one banner declaring:

lee's guilt proved!

Though Hearst's troops, in an uncharacteristic moment of restraint, had
couched the screamer within the qualifying embrace of quotation marks,
such a nicety was lost on Lee, who with increasing distress reread the line.
Meanwhile, Wright pulled out his second text— a Bible. At the sight, the
Negro, who was handcuffed to a chair, lunged forward, fell to his knees, and
kissed the book's cover. Then, he plaintively vowed: "I swear 'fore God I
didn't do it."

That was good enough for Wright. After collecting his props, the coun-
terfeit preacher emerged from Lee's cell and announced: "He's innocent as
a babe." The investigators, however, weren't convinced. If the Lord was an
insufficient truth serum, they'd try a stronger one. Which was evidently why

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS 69

one Walter Graham, identified only as a "young white man," was allowed to
take a derringer into a cell next to Lee's and fire it into the ceiling. Again,
the same result. As the Journal related: "Lee was badly frightened by the
report, but when visited shortly afterwards by the detectives he had not
weakened."

It was nearly midnight when Black and Scott decided that the only way
to reach a resolution was to bring Lee and Frank together. So the detectives
descended from the building's central bank of cell blocks to the private
room adjacent to Lanford's office where Frank— due to the fact that he
could afford to pay an off-duty officer to stand guard— was being held
under the equivalent of house arrest. As Frank would subsequently recall,
he'd just turned back the covers of his cot to go to bed when Black and
Scott arrived and asked if they could talk with him. Frank agreed, accom-
panying the men to a nearby room. There, he said, they made their pro-
posal:

In that room was detective Scott and detective Black and myself . . . They
said: "Mr. Frank, you have never talked alone with Newt Lee. You are his
boss and he respects you . . . We can't get anything more out of him. See if
you can." I says: "All right, I understand what you mean; I will do my best,"
because I was only too willing to help. Black says: "Now put it strong to
him, and tell him to cough up and tell all he knows. Tell him that you are
here and that he is here and that he better open up and tell all he knows
about the happenings at the pencil factory that Saturday night, or you will
both go to hell." Those were the detectives' exact words.

The detectives' exact words would later become a topic of dispute, but
what is indisputable is that on the heels of Frank's conversation with Black,
Lee was placed in the room with him— Black and Scott standing just out-
side the door.

According to Frank, his conversation with Newt was to the point but
unproductive:

They put Newt Lee into a room and handcuffed him to a chair. I spoke to
him at some length in there, but I couldn't get anything additional out of
him . . . Remembering the instructions Mr. Black had given me I said:
"Now, Newt, you are here and I am here, and you had better open up and
tell all you know, and tell the truth and tell the full truth, because you will
get us both into lots of trouble if you don't tell all you know," and he
answered me like an old Negro: "Before God, Mr. Frank, I am telling you
the truth and I have told you all I know." And the conversation ended right
there.

70 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

According to Black and Scott, however, things went differently. They
said that while eavesdropping, they heard Frank— following a series of
denials by Lee and using language that was all his own— tell his employee
that if he kept it up "they'd both go to hell." Moreover, they said that it was
not Lee but Frank who seemed on the defensive. As Scott would subse-
quently assert:

They were together there for about ten minutes alone. When ten minutes
was up, Mr. Black and I entered the room and Lee hadn't finished his con-
versation with Frank and was saying, "Mr. Frank it is awful hard for me to
remain handcuffed to this chair," and Frank hung his head the entire time
the negro was talking to him, and finally in about thirty seconds, he said,
"Well, they have got me too." After that we asked Mr. Frank if he had got-
ten anything out of the negro and he said, "No, Lee sticks to his original
story." Mr. Frank was extremely nervous at that time. He was very squirmy
in his chair, crossing one leg after the other and didn't know where to put
his hands; he was moving them up and down his face, and he hung his head
a great deal of the time the negro was talking ...

The conflicting versions of what happened during the headquarters
encounter between Frank and Lee would never be reconciled, but the ses-
sion's effect upon the detectives would be readily apparent. Henceforth,
their interest in Lee would diminish, leaving Frank as the lone suspect.

FIVE

A Good Name, a Bad Reputation

The idea that the National Pencil Company was a business whose
grindingly mechanistic surface masked a luridly bawdy core arose
Monday morning after a group of officers making yet another
sweep through the factory basement discovered what appeared to be a
trysting place. Enclosed in the shallow plywood-walled storage shed that
ran nearly the length of the cellar's south side and behind which Mary Pha-
gan's body had been secreted, this dank, filthy compartment housed an
improvised cot fashioned from wooden boxes and covered with crocus
bags. Impressed into the sawdust floor surrounding the cot were numerous
female footprints, a sight that briefly led the police to entertain the notion
that Mary Phagan had been lured here, assaulted and then murdered. Even
after abandoning this theory in favor of the one holding that the girl had
been killed upstairs in the metal department, the lawmen continued to
assert that the basement room was connected with the crime. As the Jour-
nal was soon asking in an insinuating front-page teaser: "Was Factory Used
as Rendezvous?"

Tbesday morning, before such possibilities could be sufficiently ex-
plored, the Georgian rushed into print with a story intimating that not only
were employees conducting assignations in the factory's basement but
they'd adorned their hideaway with decorative touches befitting a bordello.
Beneath the headline nude dancers' pictures on walls, Hearst's min-
ions reported:

Pictures of Salome dancers in scanty raiment and of chorus girls in differ-
ent postures adorned the walls of the National Pencil Company plant.
They had been clipped from a theatrical and prize-fighting magazine. A
more melodramatic stage setting for a rendezvous or for the committing of
a murder could hardly have been obtained.

Once again, the Georgian was in all likelihood exercising dramatic license.
In fact, Leo Frank's friends would later contend that the only art on the
premises consisted of a chaste calendar-girl illustration hanging in the super-

72 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

intendent's office, and no other Atlanta paper would pick up the pinup tale.
Yet the larger point— that the plant provided a gamy setting for venery—
was never really contested. Indeed, R. P. Barrett, the machinist who'd
spotted the hair and bloodstains in the metal department, would tell the
coroner's inquest that he'd "frequently" heard that the building was used for
"immoral purposes." Meanwhile, V. F. Schenck, proprietor of the neighbor-
ing Schenck Brothers' Metal Shop, would testify that "frolics were secretly
held in the place."

The National Pencil Company's emerging bad reputation could also be
linked to its location. Though South Forsyth Street was lined primarily
by reputable small manufacturers, and while it was paralleled two blocks
to the east by luminous Peachtree Street, it was intersected two blocks to
the south by a thoroughfare that conjured an altogether different image.
Mitchell Street, which connected Georgia's capitol on the east with Termi-
nal Station on the west, was home to numerous railroad hotels. Here, many
of the prostitutes Chief James L. Beavers had driven from Charles C.
Jones's houses only six months earlier had resumed their trade. Though it
can't be said with certainty that any of these women had been receiving
gentleman callers in the less than romantic confines of the factory base-
ment, such a prospect was not unimaginable. As even Leo Frank, in his only
public comment on the matter, told the Georgian: "In a plant this size,
where 170 people are employed and the force is continually shifting, it is
quite probable that some of them were low characters." Then, in a crack
that could not have played well at 175 Decatur Street, the superintendent
added: "Under our present conditions of morals in Atlanta with the segre-
gated district abolished, these low characters have undoubtedly grown
worse. That our janitor was bribed to allow them into the building is not an
unbelievable suggestion."

All this, however, was preamble. The development that convinced many
Atlantans that something untoward had been going on at the factory and,
more critically, intimated that Leo Frank was not only involved but had
manifested a prurient interest in Mary Phagan, occurred at Wednesday
afternoon's opening session of the coroner's inquest. Initially, the 15-year-
old newsboy George Epps— one of the last witnesses to testify on this
day— had not sparked much curiosity. The jury, which was meeting in the
police commission's third-floor headquarters boardroom, had already
heard from the expected headliners. Sergeants Dobbs and Brown and Offi-
cer Anderson had described the scene that had confronted them in the
plant basement Sunday morning. Newt Lee had reiterated his tale, in the
process relating that he'd spent the two hours Frank had banished him from
the premises Saturday afternoon at a patent-medicine show whose main
attraction— a fire-eating Negro— drew throngs of credulous blacks to a cor-

A GOOD NAME, A BAD REPUTATION 73

ner beneath a downtown viaduct. The revelation had both leavened the
mood and reinforced the view that Lee was too simple a soul to have gotten
mixed up in a murder plot.

After taking his place at a long cluttered table at the head of which sat
Coroner Paul Donehoo, six jurors and Fulton County Physician J. W. Hurt
and at the foot of which a battery of reporters and stenographers had dug
in, Epps— a towheaded whippersnapper who struck the Constitution's man
as "bright [and] quick witted"— grabbed the room's attention by declaring
that on the day of Mary Phagan's death, he had ridden to town with her on
the English Avenue trolley. During the trip, Epps said, the two had made a
date to watch the Confederate Memorial Day parade and then attend a
movie, the one hitch being that Mary first had to visit the National Pencil
Company and pick up her wages, a prospect, Epps emphasized, that had
frightened her:

She began talking about Mr. Frank. When she would leave the factory on
some afternoons, she said, Frank would rush out in front of her and try to
flirt with her as she passed. She told me that he had often winked at her
and tried to pay her attention. He would look hard and straight at her, she
said, and then would smile. It happened often, she said. She told me she
wanted me to come down to the factory when she got off as often as I could
to escort her home and kinder protect her.

Epps had little else to say (before stepping down, he described how he'd
waited in vain for Mary on April 26 at their prearranged meeting place, a
downtown drugstore), but little else was required. Here was a statement
that would resonate with just about any mother or father who'd stood
by helplessly as poverty had forced their daughters to forsake the stable,
sexually constraining world of home for the fluid, sexually liberating— and
menacing— world of employment. As one contemporary observer later
noted: "No girl ever . . . go[es] to work in a factory but that her parents feel
an inward fear that one of her bosses will take advantage of his position to
mistreat her, especially if she repels his advances. This fear is readily con-
verted into passion." Epps, in other words, had touched the nerve where the
deracinated dirt farmer's pride in the past converged with his anxiety about
the future, whetting his suspicion that child labor served all too often to
gratify not only lust for profit but lust for flesh.

Thursday morning, the Constitution splashed the charge atop its front
page. Boomed the headline:

FRANK TRIED TO FLIRT WITH MURDERED GIRL
SAYS HER BOY CHUM

74 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

And the worst seemed still ahead. By noon Thursday, some 150 factory
employees— many of them young girls adorned in their Sunday finery and
palpitating with excitement— were waiting in the halls outside the police
commission boardroom. Mary's coworkers had been subpoenaed to testify
at the inquest's second session. But as the hours ticked by and the session
did not start, it became clear that at least for now, the anticipated revela-
tions would not be forthcoming. No one was surprised by the delay— no
one, that is, who knew and admired Fulton County's coroner.

At 35, Paul Donehoo was a careful man— he had to be. Left blind by a
childhood bout of meningitis, Donehoo had managed through imagination
and perseverance to achieve not only self-sufficiency but success. As a boy,
he'd learned to make his way unassisted around Atlanta by training his
ears to "hear solids," to distinguish between a wall and a door, empty
streets and traffic. Later, he'd earned his law degree by convincing a fellow
attorney-in-embryo to read cases aloud to him at night. As for the Georgia
code and key legal precedents, he'd committed such matters to memory,
turning his mind into a virtual law library. Though he'd served as coroner
for just four years in 1913, he'd already won praise for his thoroughness.
In fact, some people believed his disability actually aided him in his work.
As the Journal reported: "Not being able to see with his eyes, he is not
easily diverted from the point at issue and refuses to allow the witness to
wander." Since in Fulton County the coroner— as opposed to the medical
examiner— was responsible solely for conducting inquests, such grit was no
small asset.

While Donehoo initially appeared to have been as swayed by Epps's
story as were others, by Thursday he'd reconsidered, and after consulting
with Chiefs Beavers and Lanford, he decided to suspend hearings into the
Phagan murder until the atmosphere cooled. In explaining the move, Done-
hoo remarked: "I would not be holding this jury if I were satisfied or were
reasonably certain as to the facts in our possession. A case like this, so
deeply wrapt in mystery, cannot be solved in a day. And why should the
public demand such great haste? It requires weeks and sometimes months
before some of these mysterious cases can be cleared. It is only in the mag-
azines that solutions are forthcoming in a day."

In the wake of George Epps's testimony, two contradictory images of Leo
Frank would begin to evolve. One flickered to life in the consciousness of
Atlanta's working class, the cracker majority who identified with Mary Pha-
gan. The other unfurled in the interior world shared by the city's German
Jews, the privileged enclave that saw Frank as one of its own. In the first,

A GOOD NAME, A BAD REPUTATION 75

Frank was cast as a defiler of young girls. In the other, he appeared as an
exemplary man and loyal husband. Over time, these notions would solidify
into the irreconcilable points of view that would obtain during the long
ordeal ahead.

That many Atlantans had now begun to see Frank as a sexual predator is
nowhere made clearer than in the files of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
Starting Thursday, May i— the day after Epps leveled his charge— at least
two and occasionally as many as seven Pinkerton agents would be in the
field. The operatives did not devote their efforts solely to exploring the alle-
gations of impropriety swirling around Frank. The typed reports they sub-
mitted daily to factory lawyers and to headquarters address every facet of
the investigation. Still, the dossiers suggest that the Pinkertons— and, by
extension, the Atlanta police, for the files prepared by the Pinkerton assis-
tant superintendent Harry Scott invariably begin: "John Black and I then
made an investigation"— devoted a large proportion of their energies to
running down reports of Frank's purported sexual misconduct. For reasons
that had to do with the fact that these dispatches contained material dam-
aging to both Frank and the state, they were never made public and were
indeed accessible to only a select few in each respective camp, not just at
the time but down through the years.

The names of the Pinkerton investigators who conducted the probe are
referred to in the files merely by initials. But the agents who played the
greatest roles are identifiable, and they must be mentioned, for their predis-
positions may have colored their findings. H.S. was, of course, Harry Scott.
Meanwhile, L.P.W. was L. P. Whitfield. At 31, with dark hair parted in the
middle and plastered down on the sides, eyes swimming behind thick-
lensed glasses and dewlaps folding into his collar, Whitfield came across as
something of a Milquetoast. A native of the Civil War battlefield town of
Kennesaw a few miles north of the Phagans' Marietta homeplace and a
devout Baptist, he devoted his free time to his church choir. But harmless as
he seemed, Whitfield possessed a strong will and a sharp mind. More impor-
tant, he was Scott's rival.

Typical of the kind of thing the Pinkertons looked into was a lead that
had materialized Tiiesday or Wednesday when a trolley car conductor as-
signed to the same car that had transported Mary Phagan to town April
26 fished from beneath a seat a puzzling note addressed to the police and
purporting to relate Frank's history of sexual advances toward the victim.
L. P. Whitfield was the agent assigned to follow this thread, and eventually
it led him to the Bellwood home of Helen Ferguson, the pencil factory

76 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

worker who'd informed Fannie and J. W. Coleman of their daughter's mur-
der. In Whitfield's account of the Ferguson interview can be heard the terri-
fied yet titillated voice of Atlanta's working girls:

At 6:00 p.m., I met Helen Ferguson and secured a statement from her,
Miss Ferguson stated that city detectives had allowed her to read a letter
which was addressed to police headquarters, which letter stated that Mary
Phagan told that Leo M. Frank had put his arm around her, and asked
Mary if she wanted to take a joy ride of Heaven, and that Mary Phagan had
asked Frank, "How?" to which Frank replied that he would show her some
day. This letter was signed "A 13-year old chum of Mary." Helen Ferguson
stated that Grace Hicks wrote this letter and that Grace resides at #100
McDonough Road, Atlanta, Ga., as she knew Grace Hicks' handwriting.

Grace Hicks, of course, had identified the body at the funeral home Sunday
morning.

But it wasn't just overwrought teenagers who were making such charges.
One of the most compelling leads the Pinkertons looked into was provided
by three men — O. S. Clark, H. B. Sibley and T. R. Malone; respectively a par-
cel check clerk, a gateman and a security guard at the Terminal train sta-
tion. Their story involved an alleged lover's spat they'd witnessed on the
eve of the murder between a man who looked like Leo Frank and was tick-
eted on Southern Railways to Washington, D.C., and a girl who resembled
Mary Phagan. In his report, a Pinkerton agent known only as F.C.P. quoted
Clark as telling him:

At 11:00 a.m., I was on duty at the parcel check room at the Terminal
Station, Atlanta, Ga., when I noticed a man about 5 ft. 10 in. in height,
weight about 135 to 140 lbs., age 25 to 26 years, wearing a dark brown suit
of clothes, black derby hat, brown hair, smooth shaven, slender face with
sharp features, hazel eyes, wearing no vest, come to my window with a
medium sized tan hand satchel to be checked. I checked same, and at the
same time, I saw a girl, about 15 years of age, 5 ft. 4 in. tall, [wjeighing about
no to 115 lbs., blonde, wearing a gray or lilac colored suit, rather well
developed, with a full face and wearing a large hat, skirts that struck her
legs just above her shoe tops, or where shoe tops would be, come from over
near the negro waiting room, and meet the man. I noted that this girl was
crying and talking to the man quite a good deal. Just before dismissing
them from my mind, I looked on the tag which was on the satchel, I saw a
name and an address, I have forgotten the name, but the address was the
National Pencil Company, Atlanta.

A GOOD NAME, A BAD REPUTATION 77

From there, T. R. Malone picked up the story, informing F.C.R:

Going back to Friday, April 25th, 1913— at 11:00 a.m. when the man and
the girl left the gates and started towards the parcel check room ... a
stranger to me, but a man whom Mr. Sibley called Mr. Hill, and myself
talked about the couple. Someone remarked, "I wonder if they are man
and wife." Mr. Hill spoke up and said, "No, her name is Mary— (paused)
Mary,— something— Campbell, I think she used to live near Marietta, Ga.
Her mother married again about one year ago. They live down here
now." ... I understand Mary Phagan's mother's name is Coleman. I believe
Mr. Hill meant to say Coleman.

Like so many others, Clark and Malone, upon hearing of Mary Phagan's
murder, had raced to Bloomfield's, and each swore that the body laid out
there belonged to the girl they'd seen arguing with the man who fit Frank's
description. Unlike the "joy ride of heaven" tale, this story could not be
kept under wraps, receiving prominent play in all three papers. The Journal,
in fact, gave it a double-deck banner:

WITNESSES POSITIVE MURDERED GIRL WAS SAME WHO
CREATED SCENE AT THE TERMINAL STATION ON FRIDAY.

Even as the Pinkertons were trying to get to the bottom of the Terminal
Station sighting, they were also looking into charges that prior to the mur-
der, Frank had seduced and impregnated several of his female workers.
Initially, most of the tips revolved around an erstwhile employee named
Lena Bernhardt. To no avail, Harry Scott and John Black quizzed plant per-
sonnel about the young woman. Finally, they called at the girl's residence.
Reported Scott:

Detective Black and myself then went to the home of Miss Lena Barn-
hardt [sic], where we saw her mother, and questioned her closely, after
which she stated that Mr. Frank was not the father of the child, but that
a Mr. Cosby, who was at one time a chauffeur for J. Carroll Payne [an
Atlanta lawyer], was responsible for same: That the matter had been aired
in the courts and settled.

Thus the connection between Bernhardt and Frank was dispelled, but as
Whitfield's file for the same day— the day the hearings were scheduled to
reconvene— makes plain, this was not the end of the accusations involving
Frank's alleged peccadilloes:

78 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

The National Pencil factory was closed today, as a majority of the
employees were subpoenaed to appear before the coroner's inquest, and I
had Mr. Mendenhall [a tipster] to accompany me to Police Headquarters,
where the inquest was being held, and Mr. Mendenhall designated two
men to me, who he stated had informed him that Frank had been familiar
with several of the girl employees and that they were afraid to testify
against Mr. Frank, etc., I learned that these men's names are Ely Burdett
and James Gresham. Mr. Mendenhall further stated that other men
employees of the pencil factory had told him similar stories, but he did not
see any of these men at the inquest.

Sounding a similar note, Paul Whitaker, a former factory employee and
friend of Mary Phagan's, subsequently told F.C.P.:

I have . . . seen Mr. Frank ... at times when talking to some of the women
employees, it seemed to me that he rubbed up against them a little too
much. I noticed this often, but never said anything about it.

One of the most ubiquitous reports connecting Leo Frank to Mary Pha-
gan maintained that on the day of the murder, the victim had been accom-
panied to the factory by another girl. While little Mary had gone inside to
pick up her wages, this companion had waited outside until a man, presum-
ably Frank, came to the door and told her Mary had work to do and would
not be down for a while. F.C.P. was the Pinkerton operative assigned to
check out the story, and his labors eventually led him to the home of its
source, a certain Mrs. Holmes. Afterward, F.C.P. filed a report that though
addressing only this one woman suggests how worked up the general popu-
lace had become:

I went to Mrs. Holmes' house at 2:30 p.m., but she was not in. She resides in
South Decatur [an Atlanta suburb] near Whiteford Ave., and I remained
there until she returned, at which time she informed me that she was a
"dreamer" and that she did not know these things to be true, except that
they "just came to her in her sleep." I observed that this old woman, who
lives alone, is in a way an intelligent woman . . . She reads all the news about
the Phagan murder case, and I think, she drew these conclusions and thinks
of them so much that she does not know whether she read them or whether
some one told her . . . that is, she is well read to the extent that she is crazy.

Other allegations against Frank would also prove to be feverish figments
of the sort produced by overexposure to Hearst journalism. Yet as the more
credible leads the Pinkertons were pursuing suggest, not all the charges

A GOOD NAME, A BAD REPUTATION 79

could be so easily dismissed. Just because most were apparitions did not
rule out the possibility that some were not.

If Atlanta's good country people were suffering from what might well have
been diagnosed as a collective sexual hysteria, then its German- Jewish
elite were afflicted by the opposite side of the same malady, a collective
sexual denial. To his coreligionists, Leo Frank was a collage of respectable
emblems— Cornell grad, engineer, married man, president of the B'Nai
Brith.That he could have been seized by those priapic impulses to which no
male is immune, that he could have been tempted by any of the hundred-
odd adolescent girls who gazed up at him each day from their worksta-
tions—well, such a prospect was not to be considered. Or, if considered, it
could not be articulated. Which is why when eminent local Jews began
speaking out for Frank, their remarks were by necessity platitudinous.
Hence the comments of B'Nai Brith lodge member Milton Klein— carried
in all three newspapers on Friday, May 2— in response to George Epps's
inquest testimony:

Leo Frank, the superintendent and general manager of one of Atlanta's
largest and most promising industries, spends two hours in his office on a
holiday after generously relieving the watchman during these hours. His
habits are regular and industrious and his life, while in Atlanta, is perfectly
blameless in every respect. The terrible crime committed in his plant calls
forth the closest scrutiny of Mr. Frank's relations with his 200 workmen
and women. Only the highest words of praise and confidence in his charac-
ter are heard on all sides.

I have worked with Mr. Frank for years in various charitable organiza-
tions and have ever found him the most polished of gentlemen, with the
kindest of heart and the broadest of sympathy. To such an extent it is rec-
ognized among his fellow lodge men that we have honored him with the
office of president, which is the highest rank in our organization. He is a
liberal supporter of many worthy enterprises. But his greatest work has
been among his own employees at the factory. The first to report in the
morning and the last to leave at night, every day and holidays, he has
labored to build up a factory that in spirit and efficiency is second to none
south of the Mason and Dixon's line.

After the magnificent work he has done in his adopted home, shall we
without consideration, emphasize every bit of gossip which unjustly and
groundlessly connects him with this awful tragedy? No one seeks more
fervently to discover the real perpetrator of this atrocious crime than Mr.
Frank.

80 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Leo Frank's image among Atlanta's German Jews, in short, arose not from
their worst fears but from their best wishes— wishes, it must be added, born
not of a week's worth of headlines and innuendo but of five years' worth of
close association. Yet wishes still.

From August 6, 1908— the day Frank had arrived in Atlanta and checked
in to the Kimball House, a sprawling Victorian dowager at Peachtree and
Decatur streets that for half a century was the city's landmark hotel— he
had unfailingly impressed friends and business associates as considerate
and responsible, albeit somewhat rigid.

Away from the factory in those first months, Frank had listened to classi-
cal music on his Victrola (he loved Strauss waltzes), read copiously (as a
boy, he'd named his toy sailboats for the characters in James Fenimore
Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales) and taught himself to play chess. His ap-
proach to the game, as it was to so much else, was systematic. On the first
page of a three-by-five pad, he neatly inscribed the title: "Chess Notebook
No. 1." On the second, he appended his signature. On the third, in a hand-
some draftsman's hand, he drew stylized pictures of all the chess pieces,
adding a key that described their powers. Then, on page after meticulous
page, he inked in chessboards on which he worked out such basic gambits
as Scholar's Mate, the Ginoco Piano and Philador's Defense. Beneath the
diagrams, he jotted down observations for future use. "Good against Rui
Lopez attack," declared a typical entry.

Orderly and inward, a stranger in the South, Frank had carapaced him-
self behind a wall of work and intellect. This wall, however, was not without
windows. Much as he might try to present himself as an exemplar of dispas-
sionate reason, the factory superintendent was prone to fits of anxiety. Par-
ticularly upsetting to Frank were his clashes with Sig Montag. While Frank
was in charge of operations, Mister Sig controlled the purse strings, and
he frequently called Frank into his office at Montag Paper Company to
upbraid him for some financial shortcoming. Inevitably, the superintendent
left these sessions shaking and fumbling for a cigarette.

More than anyone, Lucille Selig had first perceived that Frank's brainy
hauteur masked a fragile and uncertain young man. Which may explain
why, when later asked what had initially attracted her to her future hus-
band, she mischievously responded: "I liked to make him blush."

Lucille had enjoyed numerous opportunities to bring the blood to
Frank's cheeks. Upon checking out of his temporary residence at the Kim-
ball House, Leo had rented a room from Lucille's widowed aunt Sophie at
93 East Georgia Avenue just down the street from Emil and Josephine
Selig's house at number 68. Within a week of moving in, he had been intro-
duced to Lucille, and by early autumn of 1908, he was accompanying her to
the theater and functions hosted by the city's German- Jewish elite.

A GOOD NAME, A BAD REPUTATION 8l

Lucille was twenty in 1908, and she was a series of contradictions. Raven-
haired, sloe-eyed, olive-complected, she possessed a pretty face made
prettier still because of her wit and intelligence. As the Georgian would
subsequently declare: "She inclines to that perfect brunette type so often
encountered in the women of her race. As a girl, which can not have been
so very long ago, she must have been surprisingly lovely." Yet Lucille 's nat-
ural beauty was marred by the fact that she was overweight. Had it still
been the nineties, the age of the Rubenesque ideal, her plummy amplitude
might have been regarded as an asset, but by the time Frank came into her
life, the era of the hobble skirt and the Gibson Girl had dawned, and radi-
ant though Lucille was, neither vivacity nor fashion could hide her zaftig
form.

Similarly, while Lucille was well connected— on her mother's side, the
clan boasted the Temple's cofounder, on her father's, a line of increasingly
prosperous businessmen— she herself had never been completely secure. It
was Lucille's uncle Simon who owned West Disinfecting. Her father was
merely a salesman in the family firm. As a consequence, after graduating in
1906 from Girl's High School, where she'd acquired secretarial skills,
Lucille had herself become one of Atlanta's working girls, first taking a
stenographic position at the Jewish-owned Atlanta Paper Mills Company,
then switching to a job in the same capacity in the regional offices of Swift
Meats.

Lucille was at once a perceptive young woman and a carefree girl who
seemed caught between a desire to be taken seriously and a fantasy that she
could enter into that life of beaus and balls that in the South was the
province of her sex but was for her— because of her Jewishness, her weight,
her self-awareness— unattainable.

Romantic but practical, fun-loving but high-minded, blithe but tinged
with sadness, Lucille was all these things, and all were apparent in the shop-
ping lists she regularly jotted down. These lists— among them one dated
January 23, 1909, a period when her fondness for Frank was deepening—
provide an index to Lucille's dreams:

Gibbs: $10.00 lining: $2.80

shields:

.25

4 silk:

.40

cotton:

.05

bone:

45

Walshe:

$1.00

Wilson:

$1.50

Russell:

$1.00

Orpheum:

•75

Ma:

$5.00

suit-

$17.25

carfare and foolishness:

$5.00

Lycett:

$1.00

presents:

$5.00

Lena Jahoot:

$1.30

belting:

.50

lace: $5.00

tie: .29

82 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

The prudent miss who did her own sewing, the debutante manque who
splurged for Gibson blouses and new outfits, the dutiful daughter, the
earnest face in the crowd at the theater, the lighthearted spirit who craved
gaiety and laughter— such was the collection of hopes and aspirations that
was Lucille Selig. Such was the child who fancied she could see through the
Yankee intellectual delivered to her doorstep.

For Lucille, Frank's arrival in Atlanta was a godsend— in part because so
few Jews of marrying age resided in Dixie, a circumstance that during the
years surrounding the century's turn gave impetus to an annual round of
soirees in Atlanta and New Orleans whose purpose was to marry off the
region's sons and daughters of Israel. But even if Lucille had been besieged
by suitors, there can be little doubt that she'd still have fallen for Frank. As
she would later recollect: "If there are such things as cases of 'love at first
sight,' Leo Frank's love for me and my love for Leo Frank is a case in indis-
putable point." On Valentine's Day 1909, Lucille gave Frank her heart— cut
from red construction paper, his name emblazoned on it.

On June 9, 1909, just ten months after his arrival in Atlanta, Leo pro-
posed and Lucille accepted. The next morning, Lucille departed by train to
spend a few days in Athens, Georgia, with her uncles, Simon and Bud
Michael. The Michael brothers were eccentric twins whose success as mer-
chants had enabled them to build adjoining Greek-revival mansions on
one of the college town's most fashionable streets, Prince Avenue. For
Lucille, visits with these cultured in-laws meant dances, teas and card par-
ties attended by professors and students. It was as close to genuine South-
ern bellehood as a Jewish girl from Atlanta could get. And it was here, in
the midst of the University of Georgia's graduation festivities, that Lucille
received her first love letters from her betrothed. Stilted in person, Frank
was stilted in prose as well. Yet in a series of increasingly warm missives,
he revealed himself also to be gentle, awkwardly gallant, dutiful, a mild
gossip and social. Here is what Lucille— and, by extension, Atlanta's Ger-
man-Jewish community— would come to believe was Leo Frank's true
voice.

On June 10— the very day Lucille left town— Frank stole some time at
work to write:

Tho' I have not heard so, I take it for granted that you arrived safely
in Athens, and have by this time begun what I hope will be an enjoy-
able sojourn. Enjoy yourself to the fullest. You would not believe it, but
between the last sentence and the next one, 20 minutes have elapsed. Mr.
Sig came in to talk to me— nuff said!

Last night, I brought home some work from the factory and put in two
hours work . . .

A GOOD NAME, A BAD REPUTATION 83

After I got thru ... I dropped over to your house to see the party. I am
just as much delighted (?) with poker as ever . . . [The Seligs loved poker,
whereas Frank preferred bridge.] We had a splendid day at the factory yes-
terday. If we do as well to-day we will better last week's results.

If you can spare a few minutes from the busy social hours of the Athen-
ian day, I should be glad to be the recipient of an epistle.

With best wishes to your folks in Athens and much love to you, I am,
dearest, fondly your beau . . .

On June 12, Frank wrote again, describing a Friday-night service he'd
attended at the Temple and teasing Lucille about a date he'd made in her
absence with Mister Sig's daughter:

Your postal card was duly received and I was very glad to learn that you
had begun your trip to Athens so auspiciously.

Only a few minutes ago your mother phoned me that she had received
a long letter from you and invited my perusal of same. I will drop in on my
way to supper to-night.

Last Thursday night, I paid a visit to the [Jacob] Haas's, who invited me
for tomorrow supper. I accepted. Last night, I attended service at the Tem-
ple and I enjoyed it very much. Dr. Marks [sic] was not there. A young man
who is studying to be a rabbi conducted the service and delivered the lec-
ture. The latter was a perfect jewel and was enjoyed by all. The Dr. had bet-
ter look to his laurels. After service, I went home with Mrs. Straus and
visited her daughter, Fae.

Tonight, I am to take Harriet Montag to the Lyric. Are you jealous? . . .

By June 14, five days after Lucille's departure, Frank's formal reserve
had begun to dissolve. Yet even as he waxed emotional, he still could not
resist correcting a lapse in his wife-to-be's prose style. Though in love, he
remained himself:

Your two letters of the 1 ith and 13th respectively brought gladness and
joy to our midst and balm to our hearts. That we don't write longer letters
is because matter fails to write about.

I can't say that the evening of Saturday last, spent with Harriet was one
of unmitigated pleasure. I tried my best, and the celestial denizens of
heaven could do no more ...

I don't expect that I will be very active socially this week. There is a car-
nival for the benefit of the Educational Alliance [a Jewish charity] on the
Hebrew Orphan's Home lawn, to which you would have gone if you would
have been here.

84 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

At the Lyric is the "Milk White Flag," and at the Casino "Dr. Barry"
with E. May Spooner in the leading role, as the histrionic attractions!

Athens is not doing much for you intellectually! You are a past mas-
ter in the use of slang. The latter is always the evidence of a paucity of
vocabulary . . .

Your kindly words for me are much appreciated and are treasured up
on the scrolls of memory.

I am not much on the sentimental letter writing. Read between the lines
and see if you can feel the warmth of the writer's feeling for you . . .

Yours for eternal happiness . . .

Finally on June 16, two days before Lucille was to return home, Frank
made his feelings evident:

Was carried "transcendentally" to the seventh heaven of happiness and
joy by the receipt of your letter of the 14th. Glad to learn that the good
times keep up. I presume that the dance last Monday night was the best
ever! If you wore the "pannelled effect" I'll wager you broke a few hearts.
Mine is broken by "absent treatment." Everybody remarks how thin I'm
getting. Are you affected that way?

On Monday night I met your mother and Mr. and Mrs. Marcus at Ponce
de Leon [an Atlanta amusement park]. We did not have such an ecstatic
time.

Last night I attended the lawn fete for the Settlement. I escorted Aunt
Betty. After we got there she shifted for herself. I saw her home. They cer-
tainly took the starch ($) out of me. I dropped $3.75 and have really noth-
ing to show for it.

Please let me know the time when your train is scheduled to arrive in
Atlanta so I can greet the Goddess Athena . . .

Leo Frank and Lucille Selig were married on November 30, 1910, at the
Seligs' Georgia Avenue home, Dr. David Marx officiating and only family
and a few close friends in attendance. The house, in the announcement's
phrase, "was artistic with quantities of smilax and vases of pink carnations
in all the rooms." A Cornell classmate served as Frank's best man. Lucille,
who entered on the arm of her father, wore a white charmeuse satin gown
trimmed in princess lace and pearl garniture. Orange blossoms were twined
through her tulle veil, and she carried white roses and lilies of the valley.

During the nearly two and a half years of their marriage, the couple had
by every visible criteria been content. Yes, there were occasional disagree-
ments about such innocuous differences as taste in music— Lucille was

A GOOD NAME, A BAD REPUTATION 85

drawn to ragtime, while Leo preferred symphonies. And yes, there had been
a disappointment. Both husband and wife said they wanted a child, but thus
far they'd failed to bring one into the world. (Seven decades later, Katie
Butler, a former factory employee in her 80s, would tell her physician that
she and Lucille were both pregnant during the early winter of 1913 but that
Lucille had suffered a miscarriage. If Mrs. Butler's memory was reliable, her
claim— while not clearing Frank of philandering charges— certainly sug-
gests that he and Lucille maintained sexual relations.) Such matters aside,
however, the Franks were evidently happy. "I suppose there are many hus-
bands in the world as good as Leo," Lucille would later say, "and it may be
therefore that I am foolishly fond of him. But he is my husband, and I have
the right to love him very much indeed, and I do. If I make too much of him,
perhaps it is because he has made too much of me."

On the afternoon of May 5, following a four-day cooling-off period, Paul
Donehoo reconvened the inquest. From the outset, it was clear that Leo
Frank's character had become the central issue. He would be the session's
only witness. Wary as the coroner was about rushing to judgment, he
wanted to elicit a version of the facts before the factory superintendent had
an opportunity to consider the effect those facts might have upon the pros-
ecution.

The Leo Frank who now faced Donehoo, the jurors and a horde of
reporters bore no resemblance to the agitated man detectives had encoun-
tered the morning Mary Phagan's body was discovered. Collected and
articulate, dressed in a dark suit, he came across as the picture of responsi-
bility and civility. He seemed everything that his friends and family believed
him to be and nothing that his detractors suggested that he was.

Donehoo started his examination with several inquiries into Frank's
early work experiences and the circumstances that had brought him to
Atlanta; then he shifted to the events of April 26. The superintendent pro-
vided a seemingly thorough accounting of himself. Some of the details were
new, most were not. In Frank's telling, his activities on the day of the mur-
der appeared beyond reproach. He related how he'd arrived at work at
8:30, met with his department heads, then walked to Montag Brothers at
10:00 to pick up the mail, which was delivered to that address. He told of
returning to his office at 11:00, dictating several letters to the stenographer
Hattie Hall, greeting some casual visitors (among them Emma Clark and
Corinthia Hall, both factory employees) and sorting through invoices.
Then, he recalled how Hattie Hall and the 14-year-old office boy Alonzo
Mann had departed around noon, leaving him alone until Mary Phagan

86 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

appeared at the door. In his recounting of this meeting, Frank made the ses-
sion's first bit of news:

About 12:10 or 12:15 this little girl who was killed came up and got her
envelope. I didn't see or hear anyone with her. I didn't hear her speak to
anyone who might have been outside. I was in my inside office working at
the orders when she came up. I don't remember exactly what she said. I
looked up, and when she told me she wanted her envelope, I handed it to
her. Knowing that employees would be coming in for their pay envelopes,
I had them all in the cash basket beside me, to save walking to the safe each
time. The girl left. She got to the outer door and asked if the metal had
come. I told her no.

That Mary Phagan had inquired about the metal and Frank had answered
negatively had not heretofore been publicized.

Donehoo, however, did not linger here. (In all likelihood, the coroner
already knew about the exchange, as Frank had mentioned it to Harry Scott
during their initial interview, telling the Pinkerton man, according to his
report, the same thing: "She asked about the metal, and I told her it hadn't
arrived.") Thus the superintendent resumed his narrative of the day's
events, reeling off the well-known story about directing Mrs. Arthur White
to leave the factory, locking in her husband and another workman upstairs
and departing himself. The only fresh details seemed trivial. As he was
walking into the house for lunch, Lucille and her mother were rushing out
to the opera's matinee. After eating a bite with his father-in-law, he lay
down in the parlor and smoked a cigarette. Eventually, he said, he strolled
back toward town, speaking to some relatives on the street before catching
a trolley. With roads blocked for the Memorial Day parade, the car stopped
on the edge of the business district, and he completed the trip on foot, wav-
ing to a couple of employees in the crowd.

Now came the rest of the familiar narrative: the return to work, the
arrival of Lee, the encounter with Gantt. Frank reviewed it all again,
although he did offer a new perspective here, placing a fact the detectives
regarded with suspicion into a context that made it seem benign. The rea-
son he'd never phoned Lee after hours before was that the night watchman
had just started working at the factory two weeks earlier, having trans-
ferred from a company-owned slat mill on the outskirts of town. Frank said
he'd called Newt's predecessor frequently.

Low-key and direct, Frank's testimony suggested that for him, April 26—
save for the disruptions occasioned by the opera and the Memorial Day
parade— had been just like any other Saturday: busy, ordered and book-
ended by scenes of domestic tranquility.

A GOOD NAME, A BAD REPUTATION 87

Yet unremarkable as Frank's recitation had been, it would not end on a
dull note. In response to a question from Donehoo asking if he had any last
thoughts about the day, Frank dropped a bombshell, a piece of information
that if true provided him with an alibi covering the sole gap in his April 26
timetable, the 55-minute-span between the hour Mary Phagan left his office
and the hour he departed for lunch. As the Constitution reported it:

Frank . . . startled his audience with the declaration that he was visited by
Lemmie Quinn, a pencil plant foreman, less than 10 minutes after the girl
of the tragedy had left the building Saturday.

According to Frank, Quinn remained only a couple of minutes, but the
duration of his stay was irrelevant. What mattered was that he was there at
the very time the investigators were beginning to theorize little Mary came
to her terrible end.

Even the unflappable Donehoo was jarred by the manner in which
Frank threw out this fact as if he only just recalled it. How could you for-
get such a thing? the coroner demanded. To this reasonable query, Frank
replied that Quinn's visit had simply slipped his mind until the Monday
after the crime when Quinn himself had reminded him. Donehoo did not
raise the next logical point— why had Frank waited a week to divulge the
information? Instead, as was his wont, he moved methodically on.

After four hours of examination, Frank stepped down. In Donehoo, he'd
found the perfect interlocutor, a man whose attention to detail enabled
Frank, the archetypal engineer, to present a plausible blueprint of his April
26 activities. More important, the coroner, for reasons that were never
explained, did not inquire into the charges leveled by George Epps. Finally,
even the revelation of Quinn's visit seemed to be a victory for Frank.
This because Quinn, when contacted by reporters, confirmed Frank's story.
No wonder that the newspapers' verdicts were unanimously approving.
Boomed the headline atop the next day's Georgian:

FACTORY SUPERINTENDENT'S STATEMENTS ON WITNESS STAND
CONSIDERED DISTINCTLY FAVORABLE TO HIM

And the Constitution, which had played up Epps's charges, now gave equal
time to Quinn, running out the front-page caption:

LEO FRANK INNOCENT, NEW WITNESS TELLS DETECTIVES

The vision endorsed by the German-Jewish community seemed in the as-
cendant. Frank had spoken, and as would shortly become clear, he intended

88 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

to speak no more. From this day forth, he would essentially disappear into
his cell in the Fulton County jail, the lockup to which he'd been transferred.
A forbidding institution usually referred to, in homage to the seven-story
stone turret that guarded its main entrance, as the Tower, the facility would
become Frank's new home. Here, he would exhibit such reticence (no inter-
views, no responses to any further developments) that the press would
christen him with the evocative moniker by which he would afterward be
widely known— the Silent Man in the Tower.

The debate regarding Leo Frank's character was far from over. When the
Phagan inquest reconvened three days hence, it would be at the top of the
agenda. Only now, the story would not be so pretty. During the interim,
the detectives had located several young men and women— all either for-
mer factory employees or relatives of former employees— who claimed to
have seen a different side of Frank, and late on the afternoon of May 8, they
filed into the police commission boardroom and one by one sat down at the
head of the table.

First up was an ex-worker named Tom Blackstock:

"Do you know Leo M. Frank?" Donehoo began.

"Yes."

"How long have you known him?"

"About six weeks."

"Did you observe his conduct toward female employees in the pencil
factory?"

"Yes, I've often seen him picking on different girls," Blackstock re-
sponded, describing how Frank would "rub up against" workers while pre-
tending to instruct them in their tasks.

Tom Blackstock, however, could do no more than say he'd observed such
behavior. Following him were two girls who could say they had experienced
it firsthand.

Nellie Pettis was a poutingly pretty 14-year-old whose sister-in-law was a
former factory employee:

"Do you know Leo Frank?" Donehoo again began.
"I've seen him once or twice."
"When and where did you see him?"

"In his office at the factory whenever I went to draw my sister-in-law's
pay."

A GOOD NAME, A BAD REPUTATION 89

"What did he say to you that might have been improper on any of these
visits?"

"He didn't say exactly— he made gestures. I went to get sister's pay
about four weeks ago, and when I went into the office of Mr. Frank, I asked
for her. He told me I couldn't see her unless I 'saw him' first. I told him I
didn't want to 'see him.' He pulled a box from his desk. It had a lot of
money in it. He looked at it significantly and then looked at me. When he
looked at me, he winked. And as he winked he said: 'How about it?' I
instantly told him I was a nice girl."

At this point, the coroner sharply interjected: "Didn't you say anything
else?"

"Yes I did," Nellie Pettis replied. "I told him to go to hell!"

With that, the Pettis girl stepped down, only to be followed by another
Nellie, 1 6-year-old Nellie Wood. Unlike her predecessor, the Wood girl was
garishly, almost slatternly, made up. But no matter how crumpled the petals,
she was still a flower of Southern womanhood, and her story helped to com-
plete the emerging picture:

"Do you know Leo Frank?" Donehoo inquired.

"I worked for him for two days."

"Did you observe any misconduct on his part?"

"Well, his actions didn't suit me. He'd come around and put his hands
on me when such conduct was uncalled for."

"Is that all he did?"

"No. He asked me one day to come into his office saying that he wanted
to talk to me. He tried to close the door, but I wouldn't let him. He got too
familiar by getting so close to me. He also put his hands on me."

"Where did he put his hands?"

"He barely touched my breast. He was subtle with his approaches and
tried to pretend that he was joking, but I was too wary for such as that."

"Did he try further familiarities?"

"Yes."

"What did you tell him when you left his employ?"

"I just quit, telling him that it didn't suit me."

In a chorus of young voices, then, Frank's briefly rising star was eclipsed.
Declared the headline atop the next morning's Constitution:

Sensational Statements Made at Inquest by
Two Women, One of Whom Had Been an Employee,

90 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Who Declared that Frank Had Been Guilty

of Improper Conduct Toward His Feminine

Employees and Had Made Proposals to Them

in the Factory.

The opposing images of Frank couldn't have been more polarizing—
and, in a court of law, less relevant. Unless his lawyers took the almost
inconceivable step of making his character the basis of the defense, his
behavior prior to April 26, 1913— good or bad— would be inadmissible.
Which was why, while it may have been easy to damn or praise Frank, it was
not going to be easy to prosecute him.

SIX

hortly after dawn on Monday, May 5, the stillness of Marietta's
municipal cemetery was broken by the sound of picks and shovels
hitting home as gravediggers began disinterring Mary Phagan's
body. At last, an autopsy was to be conducted. Six days after the funeral and
nine after the murder, Dr. Henry Fauntleroy Harris, secretary of the Geor-
gia Board of Health, had come up by car from Atlanta to establish the exact
cause of the girl's death and end speculation regarding what, if any, other
horrors she'd endured.

Also present were Fulton County Physician J. W. Hurt, who'd made the
initial cursory examination of the remains, and Coroner Donehoo, but both
deferred to the 46-year-old Harris, in title and reputation Atlanta's fore-
most medical figure. An Alabama native and 1890 graduate of Philadel-
phia's highly regarded Jefferson Medical College, Harris had been on the
cusp of a great deal of pioneering work, ranging from efforts to eradicate
that bane of the South's rural population, pellagra, to cancer-cure experi-
ments. A member of the American Association of Pathologists and Bacteri-
ologists, the doctor, prior to moving to Atlanta, had served as an associate
professor of pathology at Jefferson Medical.

With the body lying on a blanket on the ground, Harris worked at a
deliberate pace, probing wounds, trepanning the skull, taking tissue samples
and removing the stomach. He had no fear of being observed, for the press
had not been informed of the postmortem, and few people in Marietta
knew anything about it. At noon, the procedure complete, the corpse was
returned to its casket and to the earth.

Despite the secrecy, the news that Mary Phagan's body had been disin-
terred couldn't be kept quiet. An inevitability, as the examination had taken
so long that Donehoo was tardy for the inquest's Monday afternoon ses-
sion—the session at which Leo Frank testified. The late editions played up
the story. Proclaimed the Georgian: phagan girl's body exhumed. But
such headlines notwithstanding, little information regarding the autopsy
was released.

That details regarding the Phagan postmortem were hard to come by

92 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

was a tribute to the individual who had ordered the examination— Hugh
Manson Dorsey, solicitor general of Fulton County. For a couple of days
now, the impression had been growing that Dorsey intended to wrest con-
trol of the probe from what he regarded as a bungling, leak-prone police
force. As early as May i, in fact, he had told the Georgian:

The investigation has been hesitating. All leads given to the police have
not been brought out. No effort has been made to establish if the shirt said
to have been found in the ash barrel back of Lee's home was Lee's. The
handwriting tests on the notes have not been exhausted— in fact, hardly
touched upon. The marks on the girl's body might lead to an extensive
[examination] that has never been made.

Had Dorsey been less politic, he could have continued his litany, adding
to it the police's failure to keep the murder notes out of Harold Ross's
hands, to secure the crime scene (countless gawkers traipsed through the
plant the Sunday the body was located) or even to harvest such basic clues
as the bloody fingerprints on the factory's basement door, which had
remained in situ until the Tuesday following the killing when a private citi-
zen had taken it upon himself to chisel them off, then deliver them to the
station house. Yet the prosecutor knew he'd ultimately have to work in con-
cert with Decatur Street, thus shortly after leveling his complaints, he'd
summoned Chiefs Beavers and Lanford to the Thrower Building, the tem-
porary home of Fulton County government. (The granite courthouse that
to this day houses Atlanta's judicial system was in 1913 only partially com-
pleted.) By session's end, Lanford, at least, had been placated. "He seemed
pleased with our progress," the detective chief had told reporters. "He
denied the circulated report that he was disappointed in the lack of evi-
dence we had gathered." Though Beavers had emerged stony-faced from
the gathering, there can be no doubt that Dorsey's gambit had succeeded,
for Detectives John Starnes and Pat Campbell were soon assigned to his
staff, and Harry Scott began briefing him regularly as well. As the mystery
entered its second week, the Journal proclaimed: "Dorsey is probably the
only man who is in touch with every phase of the investigation."

In short, the Monday, May 5, autopsy of Mary Phagan marked the emer-
gence of Hugh Dorsey as the central figure in the probe, a debut Dorsey
made official later that day when, in the midst of the inquest's afternoon ses-
sion, he negotiated his way through the packed police commission board-
room and took a seat directly behind Donehoo, to whom he promptly began
whispering suggestions.

While no statute prohibited Dorsey from inserting himself into this early

SKULDUGGERY 93

phase of the investigation, it was almost unheard of in Georgia for a prose-
cutor to assume an active role in a case until it reached the grand jury. Over
the next days, the press would vigorously debate the appropriateness of the
solicitor general's actions. Replying to grumbles that he'd exceeded his
authority, Dorsey made no apologies. "The burden of convicting the perpe-
trator of this horrible crime, whoever he may be, will fall directly upon my
shoulders and I don't propose for that reason, if not for many others, to let
it [the inquiry] drag along," he told reporters. Then, lest anyone doubt his
resolve, he not only ordered Dr. Claude Smith, the city chemist, to examine
the shirt found at Newt Lee's house and the blood spots discovered on the
factory floor, but he orchestrated another dramatic raising of the dead.

Around 2 p.m. on Thursday, May 7, Mary Phagan's remains were disin-
terred for the second time in less than a week. The object of this latest
autopsy would be both forensic and medical. Testifying to its dual purpose
was the fact that Dr. Harris was joined at the grave site by an unidentified
fingerprint technician.

As before, a blanket on the ground served as the operating table, and
also as before, Harris removed at least one organ. Moreover, he apparently
snipped a few locks of hair from the body's head. This last action, the Jour-
nal acidly noted, was necessitated by the fact that some hair taken by Dr.
Hurt during his preliminary exam and "which was in possession of the
police has been lost." It was the work of the fingerprint technician, however,
that attracted the most curiosity. Reported the Constitution: "A chart was
made of the cuts and bruises on the face and body and photographic plates
were made of the fingerprints on the throat." Added the Georgian: "The
fingerprints on the body were to be photographed and compared with the
fingerprints of persons under suspicion."

Most of what the press wrote about the second postmortem consisted of
conjecture, for this procedure was shrouded in more secrecy than the first.
Did the examination show that Mary Phagan had been raped, that her body
had been mutilated? These questions— in references to "the crime that was
taken for granted by all to have preceded the actual killing" and "wounds
about the chest and shoulders"— darted in and out of the newspaper ac-
counts, but confirmations were impossible to obtain. Harris, complying with
Dorsey's instructions, refused comment, but even if the doctor had been so
inclined, he would not have been ready to make a statement until he fin-
ished his lab work— a task projected to take several weeks. Furthermore,
when reporters contacted Newport Lanford,they learned that the detective
chief hadn't been informed of the additional autopsy. Dorsey was securing
his position in the classic manner— by managing the collection and flow of
information.

94 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

To most Atlantans it was clear why Hugh Dorsey had taken command of
the Phagan case— he needed a courtroom victory. During the nearly three
years since he had been appointed the Fulton County solicitor general,
Dorsey had shown an alarming propensity for losing high-profile trials. Just
two weeks earlier, the city had watched gape-jawed as a jury acquitted
one Callie Scott Applebaum of murder. Mrs. Applebaum— a lovely, albeit
lethal, vamp— had been discovered in a locked hotel room with a dis-
charged revolver, a tale involving a temporary blackout and a husband shot
in the head. Yet counsel for the mysteriously widowed defendant had
argued persuasively that Jerry Applebaum had died by his own hand. The
verdict had been rendered on April 25 and thus dominated the front pages
on the day of Mary Phagan's murder.

The Applebaum decision was only Hugh Dorsey's latest defeat. In the
spring of 1912, he had failed to convict Daisy Grace, an Atlanta society
figure, of the attempted murder of her husband, Eugene. The Grace pro-
ceedings—still fresh in Atlantans' minds— offered some worrisome paral-
lels to the Phagan case. For starters, the Atlanta Georgian, just purchased by
Hearst, had used the trial to give the city a first taste of yellow journalism.
For another, the investigation had been marred by inept police work. Finally,
the lawyer who'd successfully defended Mrs. Grace was Luther Rosser.

No prosecutor, of course, wins every battle, but Dorsey had a way of los-
ing that made Atlantans shake their heads. A case in point had occurred in
December 1910 when he was bested in what had at first seemed an open-
and-shut affair. The defendant, a black man named Charles Tanner, had
been charged with stealing a suit of clothes from a pawnbroker. What made
conviction appear certain was that Tanner was, in one reporter's phrase, "an
unusual negro." To wit: He had twelve fingers, six on each hand, and as a
consequence, his accuser had identified him "beyond a shadow of a doubt."
But at the trial, the defense had tripped the solicitor up by calling Tanner's
cousin Jonas to the stand. The Journal described the scene and its conse-
quences:

When the latter negro was commanded to hold up his hands, he was
found to have six fingers on each hand like his cousin. The resemblance
between the two was marked, and in the face of this freak evidence the
case was dismissed.

The Tanner debacle was not so much an example of Dorsey's bumbling
as it was an incident that suggests that under his aegis the Fulton County
solicitor's office lacked gravitas. (twelve fingers not sufficient iden-

SKULDUGGERY 95

tification, declared the Journal's headline.) It would have been impossi-
ble to conceive of the episode having occurred during the lengthy reign of
Dorsey's predecessor.

For thirty years, Charles Dougherty Hill had towered over the Atlanta
courts. A figure of unquestioned probity and rare humility, "Old Man
Charlie"— as Hill had been respectfully known— had possessed an innate
sense of fairness and a keen respect for the power that had been vested in
him. When pondering a defendant's fate, he would keep in mind the words
of the Scottish poet Robert Burns: "Who made the heart, 'tis He alone
decidedly can try us."

For all Hill's strengths, he had not been unflawed. His weakness for dis-
tilled Kentucky sunshine had been pronounced and had produced its share
of embarrassments. But he had possessed a nobility of spirit and a gift for
expressing that nobility in words. So stirring a speaker had he been that on
days when he was scheduled to give a closing argument, other lawyers
posted runners at the courthouse, instructing them to phone as soon as he
rose from his seat. It had been on such an occasion that Old Man Charlie
had uttered his eloquently brief last remarks.

While trying an inconsequential case on the afternoon of October 18,
1910, Hill had suffered what would prove to be a fatal stroke. After col-
lapsing, he'd found himself surrounded by concerned faces, one of which
belonged to a Negro protege, a lawyer named Henry Lincoln Johnson. Link,
as Johnson was known, had once practiced in Atlanta, but due to connec-
tions with the Republican Party, he'd received a patronage job with the fed-
eral government and had moved to Washington, D.C. Yet on this occasion,
business had brought him back to Atlanta, and like any lawyer in town with
some time to spare, he'd dropped by the courthouse to hear Old Man Char-
lie. When Hill had realized that Link's was among the visages peering down
at him, he'd murmured from somewhere deep inside: "Old friends come
home in the evening."

Three days later, 67-year-old Charles Dougherty Hill was dead, and
within less than two weeks Hugh Dorsey had been tapped to take his place.

Though Dorsey had been elected to office in his own right in 1912, his
hold on the job was tenuous. Among reporters, the consensus was that the
Phagan prosecution represented nothing less than a last chance for him.

Hugh Dorsey was not, however, a man to be underestimated. The son of
a distinguished jurist (Judge Rufus T. Dorsey, a post-Reconstruction state
legislator), a graduate of the University of Georgia, matriculant to the Uni-
versity of Virginia Law School (he'd failed to receive a degree, returning
home after one year) and partner in his father's well-connected Atlanta
firm— Dorsey, Brewster, Heyman and Howell— he possessed most of the
requisite bona fides.

96 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Dorsey was born in the small town of Fayetteville some thirty miles
south of Atlanta, and he enjoyed nothing so much as acting the rube, pep-
pering his conversation with folksy witticisms and rural pieties. Yet he was
reared in the city, and his friends included his Jewish law partner, Arthur
Heyman; his Jewish college roommate, Henry Alexander; and even Luther
Rosser, whose son, Luther Jr., had recently married Dorsey's youngest sis-
ter, Sarah. The fledgling solicitor was equally at home addressing a jury of
poor dirt farmers or exchanging bons mots with the capital's elite, and in a
state where a successful lawyer had to do both, this was a considerable
asset.

In the end, though, it was Dorsey's personality that made him a poten-
tially formidable figure. His demeanor, while not quite supercilious, was
cool and mockingly predatory. There was something sharp, watchful, raptor-
like about him, and it showed in his face. Cowlick plastered upon a high,
eggish forehead, eyes circled by the liver-stained rings that were a family
characteristic, lips frequently twisted into an appraising smile, Dorsey bore
a striking resemblance to a shrewd young owl. As unimpressive as his
record was, he conveyed the distinct impression that he wasn't worried, that
he was just awaiting the right moment to swoop down. With the discovery
of Mary Phagan's body in the National Pencil Company basement, that
moment had come.

It quickly became apparent that it would not be easy for Hugh Dorsey to
maintain control of the Phagan case. The difficulties facing him began to
reveal themselves in the aftermath of what was ostensibly a triumph. On
Thursday, May 8, the coroner's jury, following just ten minutes of delibera-
tion, recommended that Leo Frank and Newt Lee be held for further ques-
tioning. Yet in the days ahead, attention would focus less on this decision
than on the admissions made by two of the inquest's final witnesses, John
Black and Harry Scott.

"Have you discovered any positive information as to who committed
this murder?" Paul Donehoo had asked Black.

"No, sir, I have not," the police department's star investigator had
replied.

To the same query, the Pinkerton agent had also answered in the nega-
tive. While such admissions did not reflect directly on Dorsey, they did sug-
gest that barring some startling revelation turned up by the autopsies, he
had little to work with, sparking doubts concerning not only what sort of
case he would take into court but whether he could even secure indictments.

These doubts were given graphic incarnation in the Sunday, May n,
Constitution. Beneath a front-page cartoon depicting the city as an angry

SKULDUGGERY 97

matriarch clutching a scroll labeled "Phagan Case" and glowering at a
closed door labeled "Detective Dept.," the newspaper pointedly asked: "I
wonder if they're all asleep in there?" With this cartoon, the Constitution—
which had been editorializing against Decatur Street since the 1910 detec-
tive department scandal— staked out what would become a consistent
antipolice position.

Meanwhile, misgivings concerning the status of the case also began crop-
ping up in an altogether unexpected venue— the Georgian. In the sheet's
May 11 editions, the political editor James B. Nevin dismissed the evidence
upon which the coroner's jury had rendered its verdict as "horrible false
details conjured up in some disordered brain hereabout . . . misinforma-
tion, near-facts, pure falsehoods, and prejudice. Who then DID murder
Mary Phagan? The question is almost as far from an answer today, I think,
as it was when Mary Phagan's body was dragged to light."

Nevin wasn't the Georgian's sole voice of protest. On this same mid-May
Sunday, the paper unveiled a new columnist— "The Old Police Reporter"—
assigned full-time to the Phagan affair. The identity of the pseudonymous
scribe would remain a mystery, but in a supportive, albeit fatalistic, passage
in his inaugural effort, he revealed a predisposition in Frank's favor:

I cannot help but sympathize with Frank in being held as he is on the
very slight evidence presented against him. At the moment, it would seem
as though he were a victim of circumstance and that he would have to take
the consequences that follow being the superintendent of the factory and
the last person to have seen Mary Phagan alive. And consequences, as
George Eliot said, are unpitying.

Though the Georgian's slowly emerging pro-Frank stance may have
owed something to its editors' doubts regarding the superintendent's guilt,
it owed more to the Atlanta Jewish community's disatisfaction with the
paper's initial coverage and the stir that the vocal expression of the disatis-
faction created higher up in the Hearst organization.

The Georgian's first-day performance had been but an appetizer. The
courses that followed achieved the journalistic equivalent of a gluttonous
orgy as Foster Coates ordered extra after extra. Indeed, the Georgian
had wantonly heaped one intemperance atop another. The lee's guilt
proved! headline had so agitated Atlantans that Mayor Woodward and
Chief Beavers, fearing a lynching, put aside their differences long enough to
issue a joint statement decrying the sheet's "sensational and misleading"
reports. The paper had then insulted the city's Greek community by hypoth-
esizing that since little Mary had been strangled and "the garrote" was
favored among Mediterranean killers, suspicion should focus on the staff of

98 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

the Busy Bee, a Greek-owned diner frequented by pencil factory workers.
Yet the Georgian's worst offense, the one that mobilized Atlanta's Jews,
had come in the edition announcing Frank's arrest. It was there that Coates
committed the cardinal sin of declaring an unconvicted suspect guilty.
Above a photograph of Frank, the editor ran out a front-page banner flatly
stating:

POLICE HAVE THE STRANGLER

As Herbert Asbury would later recall:

Foster Coates made a blunder when Frank was accused of the crime
and taken to Police Headquarters. He put an extra on the street, of
course— and wrote a banner line for it which said without qualification
that the strangler had been arrested! The type was even larger than we
used when we tried to convince the citizenry that there was news when
there was none. The line . . . had far-reaching consequences.

The next morning, groups of Atlanta's Jews had begun arriving at the
Georgian's newsroom. The complainants weren't the sort to be taken
lightly. One party alone included Dorsey's partner, Arthur Heyman, and
the insurance brokers Isaac and Arthur Haas, kin to the factory lawyer Her-
bert Haas and descendants of a founding Atlanta family. According to
Asbury, these pillars of Southern Jewry "said the Georgian had called
Frank guilty before his trial and that it showed the existence of an organ-
ized conspiracy to railroad him to the gallows . . . they raised the cry of per-
secution and demanded that the editor denounce the police and insist on
Frank's immediate release, declaring that he was being persecuted because
he was a Jew."

Whether the accusation of anti-Semitism had been justified at this
moment is a matter of debate. Nonetheless, the following day, downtown
merchants— many of them Jewish— began circulating a petition contending
that the Georgian's extras had "aroused the community to a dangerous
degree" and asking Coates to use restraint. Here again, a fine point must be
raised— were the merchants' motivations as pure as they maintained? As
Asbury would subsequently assert:

After the discovery of the girl's body the storekeepers and other busi-
nessmen rubbed their hands and chuckled a jovial Rotarian chuckle at the
spectacle of crowds standing about staring at the headlines and the pic-
tures; they thought so much excitement would bring people into town and

SKULDUGGERY 99

that business would be good . . . But business was not good; it was worse
than it had been for many years. People did come into Atlanta, but both
visitors and townspeople were so busy reading about the murder and
enjoying their thrills over the pictures and the diagrams that they did not
have time to buy anything.

So after a little while the merchants began to complain; they asked
Coates, in person and through the advertising department, to let the excite-
ment subside a bit so their customers could be lured back into their stores.

The merchants' pleas were heard— not just at the Georgian but through-
out the city. The Journal, reeling from the Hearst sheet's performance,
played the petition-drive story atop its front page beneath the headline:

BUSINESS MEN PROTEST SENSATIONAL "EXTRAS."

All of which explains why on May i, the same day the Constitution had
headlined George Epps's allegations, the Georgian printed a banner pro-
claiming: the supremacy of the law! Beneath this line, Coates per-
formed a seeming act of editorial contrition:

It should not be necessary to say that THE LAW of the sovereign State
of Georgia IS SUPREME, that all branches of the judiciary have their
proper functions and perform their duties in a legal, time-honored way.

These trite remarks are published that the public may understand that
trials by newspapers, by experts, so-called have no judicial functions and
are valueless.

Therefore, let everybody, rich and poor, high and low, of whatever race
and creed, look to THE LAW for judgement in a dignified way and not to
newspapers or sensation mongers for legal advice that has no basis in any
law book. It is time to recall Browning's beautiful words: "God's in his
heaven, all's well with the world."

Coates was hardly repentant. Far from agreeing to temper his behavior,
he had essentially absolved himself of responsibility. His line of thinking
implied that words did not matter, that a newspaper could malign anyone
so long as the courts sorted things out and the editor quoted poetry. As
Asbury would later note: "Coates . . . was riding wild with the best story of
his large experience and he refused to stop." In response, the city's Jewish
business leaders put some steel into their objections. "The merchants began
withdrawing their advertisements," Asbury wrote. "Some took them out
immediately; others notified the paper that they would not renew their con-
tracts. The Journal and the Constitution paid no attention to the demands of
the Jews, and for a long time the Georgian ignored them also. But pressure

100 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

was soon brought to bear in New York . . . little by little the editorial and
news columns of the Georgian began to veer toward Frank."

Once the Jewish community's complaints reached New York, William
Randolph Hearst would have been hard pressed to ignore them. Though
Hearst liked to think of himself as someone who couldn't be bullied and
while he had positioned the Georgian— with its anti-child-labor editori-
als—as the people's paper, he was always aware of his political and financial
interests. And he was always willing, as he'd done repeatedly elsewhere, to
alter a paper's stance to protect those interests. When it came to the Geor-
gian's coverage of the Phagan case, Hearst had a splendid opportunity to
ascertain exactly where his interests resided, for shortly after Atlanta's Jews
registered their protests, he and his wife visited the city, socializing with
Governor-elect John Slaton and his wife, Sallie, and dining with various
merchant princes, among them Walter Rich.

To most Atlantans, the Georgian's evolving alliance with Frank was imper-
ceptible. The headlines were still huge, the streamers still red, the extras still
proliferating. But for Hugh Dorsey, the shift— when coupled with the dam-
aging admissions made by Black and Scott and the skepticism with which
the general populace regarded the police— presented a serious threat, one
that would require him not only to build a stronger case but to undertake a
shrewd campaign to manipulate public opinion.

The first important piece of new evidence Dorsey produced called into
question a key part of Frank's self-professed murder-day itinerary— his
statement that he had been at his desk for the 55 minutes between 12:15,
when he said that Mary Phagan had left his office with her pay, and 1:10, the
hour that he'd departed for lunch. The superintendent had, of course, bol-
stered this assertion at the inquest by testifying that Lemmie Quinn had
stopped by for a visit shortly after little Mary took her leave. But on May
10, all three papers reported that Dorsey had secured an affidavit from a
14-year-old ex-factory employee named Monteen Stover, who said she'd
dropped in at Frank's office at 12:05 on April 26 to pick up some outstand-
ing pay and found it deserted. While Monteen's statement was not released,
she revealed the salient details to the Constitution:

I went to the pencil factory that Saturday to draw my pay. The front
door and the door leading to the second floor were unlocked. The whole
place was awfully quiet and kinder scary as I went up the steps.

The minute I got to the office floor I looked at the clock to see if it was
time to draw my pay . . .

SKULDUGGERY 101

It was five minutes after twelve. I was sure Mr. Frank would be in his
office, so I stepped in. He wasn't in the outer office, so I stepped into the
inner one. He wasn't there, either. I thought he might have been some-
where around the building, so I waited. When he didn't show up in a few
minutes, I went to the door and peered further down the floor among the
machinery. I couldn't see him there.

I stayed until the clock hand was pointing exactly to ten minutes after
twelve. Then I went downstairs. The building was quiet and I couldn't hear
a sound.

Shortly after acquiring Monteen Stover's affidavit, Dorsey moved to
commandeer the front pages by announcing that he'd hired "the world's
greatest detective" to solve the crime. And who was this Sherlock Holmes?
To that quite legitimate inquiry, the solicitor offered only an enigmatic
smile.

While several reporters expressed initial qualms regarding the so-called
mystery sleuth's existence, most were soon regurgitating Dorsey's periodic,
albeit vague, updates regarding his exploits. One day, the solicitor revealed
that his man was "already compiling evidence," the next that he was leaving
town on a secret assignment. Such releases went a long way toward creating
the impression that the solicitor was not just in charge but in touch with an
expert answerable only to him.

The tack, however, was risky. Beavers and Lanford had already endured
one humiliation at Dorsey's hands, and they bridled at the prospect of
another. Huffed Chief Lanford: "He [the solicitor] has some mighty good
men connected with his office, and I see no need why he should employ any
'world-beater' detective to assist him." Lanford speculated that the state's
"A- 1 man" was none other than one of the police detectives— St arnes or
Campbell But to this theory, Dorsey demurred, putting the detective chief
in an even more untenable position. By May 14, Lanford was sounding
embattled. "The squad at headquarters are not inferior when it comes to
efficiency. In fact, the city detectives have unearthed the larger portion of
evidence now at hand." Several days later, Lanford warned that a breach
had developed between his department and Dorsey.

Contradictory reports regarding the investigation now began to appear.
At the urging of a handwriting expert hired by the mystery sleuth, Dorsey
publicly dismissed any lingering suspicion that Newt Lee had composed the
murder notes. But Lanford disagreed with this assessment, stating: "I have
not been able to satisfy myself that the negro is not connected with it in
some way. He knows more than he has told." By mid-May, the Constitution,
which was politically allied with the solicitor and a reliable barometer of his

102 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

thinking, was reporting that "Dorsey believes the crime was committed in
the basement, and that she [Mary] was conscious when carried there." (The
solicitor was persuaded to this opinion by a woman who told him that at
4:30 on the afternoon of the murder, she'd heard screams emanating from
the factory cellar.) Meanwhile, Lanford and Beavers held firm to their orig-
inal theory "that the victim was rendered unconscious by being struck upon
the back of the skull when her head hit the planing machine on the second
floor." Not that headquarters wasn't working up its own surprises. Before
many days passed, Lanford was titillating reporters with tales of an uniden-
tified telephone operator who on the night of April 26 allegedly overheard
"a secret conversation between two attaches of the factory" regarding the
crime. When apprised of this development, Dorsey confessed ignorance,
but he regained momentum by intimating that "startling new arrests" were
imminent. The extent to which the solicitor was perpetrating a stunt here
can't be known, but no one was apprehended, and from Lanford's perspec-
tive Dorsey appeared to be playing to the gallery. It was the detective
chiefs turn to throw up his hands. The investigation had degenerated into a
turf war.

By late May, the newspapers were using the phrase "multi-cornered" to
suggest the polarized configuration. In one corner stood Dorsey and his
mystery detective. (As it turned out, this shadowy figure actually existed.
An ex-Pinkerton agent named Frank Pond, he served as the solicitor's eyes
and ears for a month. Beyond the fact that he used numerous aliases during
this period, little is known about what he contributed.) In another stood
Chiefs Beavers and Lanford and the detectives working under them. In
still another stood the Pinkertons, although their ties to Decatur Street
led many to view them as a police auxiliary. And in a fourth stood a new-
comer, a brilliant outsider whose appearance signaled a growing disgust—
especially among Atlanta's elite— with the inhabitants of the other three.

Word that William J. Burns was en route to Atlanta inspired the kind of
fanfare usually reserved for visiting heads of state, burns called into
phagan mystery; on way from Europe, sang the Georgian's May 12
banner.

William Burns was no stranger to headlines. Since 191 1, when he solved
one of the new century's greatest mysteries— the 1910 bombing of the Los
Angeles Times building— he had been accorded endless hosannas. Burns
had traced the Times bombing (which had occurred in the midst of a union
dispute and left 20 employees dead) to the International Association of
Bridge and Structural Iron Workers. His efforts contributed to the convic-

SKULDUGGERY IO3

tion of two union members. The New York Times christened him "the great-
est detective certainly, and perhaps the only really great detective, the only
detective of genius whom this country has produced."

Not one to practice false modesty, Burns would have found little to quar-
rel with in the Times'* assessment. Short and stout with florid jowls and
flaming red hair and mustache, the investigator, according to his official
biographer, "was far more suggestive of a successful salesman or even a
theatrical personality than a highly skilled detective." Featured speaker of
the Alkahest Lyceum and Chautauqua System, friend of Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle and subject of a series of obsequious film biographies— one of which,
The Exposure of the Land Swindlers, had drawn crowds to Atlanta's Al-
cazar Theater earlier in 1913— Burns had achieved a status rivaling that of
the era's movie stars.

Since the Grand Panjandrum himself was abroad tracking a wealthy
missing person, it fell to the director of his Chicago office, a detective
named C.W.Tobie who'd helped crack the Los Angeles Times case, to set up
the Atlanta operation. Shortly after arriving in town, Tobie received an
eight-hour briefing from Dorsey. At the session's close, the solicitor, while
not casting his lot with the Burns agency, came close: "I gladly welcome Mr.
Burns. I welcome his investigator who is now on the job. I will give him and
his staff complete co-operation." In return for such support, the Burns
operative agreed to submit copies of his daily reports to the solicitor.

Predictably, news that William Burns was on the job— and that Dorsey
was glad to have him— did not sit well with Chiefs Beavers and Lanford,
who perceived the development as yet another insult and threat. If possible,
Harry Scott was more upset, as the Pinkertons had recently lost one of their
most lucrative clients— the 11,000-member American Bankers' Associa-
tion—to the Burns Agency.

Consequently, Tobie, despite the glowing advance notices, began work
in a climate of mistrust. Avoiding the press, the detective visited Marietta
to familiarize himself with the dead girl's family and friends, then he trav-
eled to an unidentified South Georgia town to search for a previously
unremarked-upon boy rumored to have accompanied Mary to the factory
on April 26.

By May 20, reporters had smoked Tobie out, and if the statements
he gave are any indication, everything he'd learned tended to reinforce po-
lice findings. "The girl was lured into the rear of the second floor, on which
were found the blood spots and hair strands," he told the Constitution.
"Advances were made. She resisted, attempted to flee. A scuffle ensued.
Blind with madness, she was struck. She fell backward. Her head struck the
lathing machine. While still unconscious, the garrote was formed in the

104 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

wrapping cord. The body was lowered to the basement. Hoping to direct
suspicion to another source, the slayer penned the mysterious notes."

In less strained circumstances, Tobie's analysis almost certainly would
have delighted both the police and the Pinkertons. Instead, those by now
understandably defensive men seized on a comment the operative didn't
even make, a remark— prof erred by a powerful Atlantan instrumental in
contracting the Burns Agency— suggesting that contrary to Tobie's own
modest claims, he had in actuality inaugurated "a new phase [in the] inves-
tigation, one entirely overlooked before that will be productive of startling
developments."

Both John Black and Harry Scott were quick to respond to the rebuke
they perceived in the words "entirely overlooked." Declared the city detec-
tive: "We have overlooked nothing. We have run to earth countless thou-
sands of rumors, and we have worked systematically." The Pinkerton man
echoed his friend: "We have overlooked nothing."

Meanwhile, Tobie imported a new fingerprint expert— P. A. Flak, a
Briton with offices in New York— to examine both Leo Frank and Newt
Lee. But before long, the Burns agent hit a wall. With witnesses reluctant to
answer questions and behaving as "if they were under instructions," he
sensed that "some secret" force was "obstructing] his efforts at every turn
of the road."

Tobie's problems didn't stop there. Rumors that he had once abducted a
baby soon began circulating around Atlanta. As it happened, Tobie had in
fact whisked a child out of one parent's hands and into the other's during
a custody case in Kansas, but "kidnapping" was too strong a word for it.
Nonetheless, the operative soon found himself spending as much time
denying accusations as he did investigating the Phagan murder.

Tobie, in short, had stumbled into a conflict that eclipsed the one be-
tween Hugh Dorsey and the police, a conflict that threatened to turn Leo
Frank into a pawn in a battle between divergent factions at war over
Atlanta's future.

The events that not only contaminated the investigation with the stench of
local politics but exacerbated the religious and class tensions inherent in
the affair cannot be understood without addressing the man who'd engaged
the Burns Agency. Thomas B. Felder was one of the best-known lawyers in
the South, an audacious figure both personally and professionally. Every-
thing about the Colonel— as the 48-year-old Felder, in the best Southern
tradition, was known— bespoke grandiosity. In appearance, he was a cane-
carrying popinjay. In conversation, he was a self-promoter. And in society,
he and his wife, Ann— president of the Atlanta Players Club— were on inti-

SKULDUGGERY 105

mate terms with all the quality folk, among them Georgia's first lady of the
theater and her husband, the governor-elect. With Sallie Slaton starring in
the Players Club's spring production of The Importance of Being Earnest,
the Felders and the Slatons were frequently linked in print, whether it was
in an item reporting their presence at a postrehearsal supper party or one
praising the women for loaning their respective silver tea services for use as
stage props.

To his social and financial peers, it little mattered that Felder had played
a pivotal part in one of the day's most outrageous legal escapades. As coun-
sel to Charles W. Morse, Felder represented a man whose name had be-
come synonymous with stock market scandal. Though often referred to
as the "Ice King" for his role in a 1906 plot to corner New York's commodi-
ties market in ice, Morse was best known for his 1907 run on United Cop-
per, a plunge setting off a collapse that bankrupted numerous trusts and
threatened the market itself until J. Pierpont Morgan— in a history-making
show of force— stopped it single-handedly. In 1910, Morse had been con-
victed of tampering with the books of the Bank of North America and sen-
tenced to fifteen years at Atlanta's Federal Penitentary. Enter Felder. In
19 1 2, after examinations by government doctors showed that Morse was
dying of Blight's disease, Felder had applied to President William Howard
Taft for an executive pardon, which Taft had granted.

Even at the time, the Morse pardon exuded a whiff of impropriety. Many
were those who doubted whether Morse was truly suffering from a fatal ill-
ness. As 1912 became 1913 and the Ice King had yet to expire, the doubters
had multiplied. Either the government had employed bad doctors— or
Thomas Felder was an exceptional lawyer. Whichever, Morse recovered,
and the news would eventually emerge that he'd faked the symptoms of
Blight's disease by imbibing a cocktail consisting of various irritating soaps.
Morse would remain among the living until 1942.

Thomas Felder was not judicial timber, although nearly everyone in his
circle was aware of that long before the Morse pardon, for he had floated
into Atlanta society on a veritable stream of alcohol. Just how many brew-
eries, distilleries, distributors and bar owners the Colonel counted as clients
is uncertain (40 was the number critics bandied about), but what it all added
up to was an undeniable reality: Felder was the city's reigning liquor lawyer.

Yet Felder's alliances with Atlanta's racier sorts ultimately ran deeper,
for he was closely associated with that fashionable rake who until just six
months before the Phagan murder had purveyed not only hooch but har-
lots. The Colonel was counsel to Charles C. Jones, proprietor of the Rex and
deposed prince of Mechanic Street— the man who'd been the primary tar-
get of Chief Beavers's campaign against the houses in the city's midst.

Felder's ties went all the way to the office of Atlanta's bibulous mayor.

106 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Jimmy Woodward was also one of the Colonel's cohorts. And what had the
mayor been up to in the months since the restricted district was shuttered?
Most recently, he'd been canvasing members of the police commission to see
if he could secure the votes necessary to topple the Beavers administration.

All of which explains why Beavers and Lanford were dismayed when,
only a week after Mary Phagan's murder, Colonel Felder— who'd never
expressed any interest in the plight of Atlanta's poor working girls and who,
as an associate of Jones, could even be said to be an exploiter of the class
and sex— announced that several of little Mary's Bell wood neighbors had
employed him to investigate the crime. Skepticism mounted following
Felder's May 13 visit to New York, where he engaged the Burns Agency,
then increased further on May 16, when he unveiled a subscription drive
to raise $5,000 that would subsidize the renowned detective. By the time
Felder issued his first statement on the case— the one claiming that the
authorities had "entirely overlooked" crucial clues— Beavers and Lanford
were convinced that he was attempting to use the Phagan probe to promote
his own nefarious agenda.

The debate over Felder's motives came to a head on May 17 when he
released the names of those Atlantans who'd thus far contributed to his
fund. Not that the Colonel was all that forthcoming. For one thing, he said
that many of his backers— among them a dozen "business leaders" and
"society ladies"— had requested anonymity. But of the supporters whom
Felder was willing to identify, one was the aforementioned Charles C. Jones
and the others were Jews, most notably the industrialist and Chamber of
Commerce official William J. Lowenstein and the philanthropist Joseph
Hirsch. For Beavers and Lanford, the connections seemed obvious. Here
was proof that Felder and by extension Burns were allied with a group that
included Frank, his religious and economic peers and the flesh peddlers and
corrupt politicians who'd opposed the police department's war on vice.

Lanford's suspicions were, of course, only that. To discredit Felder, the
detective chief needed evidence, and on May 17, he got some in the form of
a notarized affidavit signed by Mary Phagan's stepfather, John W. Coleman:

The affiant, while at the police station during the coroner's inquest . . . was
approached by a man somewhat under the influence of liquor, [who] said
to the affiant, "I am working for the law firm of T. B. Felder, and I would
like to have you go to his office, as he wants to see you, and I advise you to
employ him." Affiant said, "No, I won't go to his office." The piker then
said, "Will you talk to Colonel Felder if I bring him here?" whereupon the
affiant agreed ... He came back in a few minutes with Felder. Colonel
Felder then said, "I want you to employ me to prosecute this case. It will

SKULDUGGERY 107

not cost you a cent." The affiant told him he did not want to employ
him . . . and affiant did not employ him.

Had the statement concluded here, it might not have raised any eyebrows.
But in a distinctly Lanfordesque addenda, it continued:

Affiant is thoroughly satisfied with the great work done by Chief of Police
Beavers and Chief of Detectives Lanford and the able men working under
them, as he believes, as thousands of others do in Atlanta, that they have
the real murderer in jail . . . The affiant cannot reconcile himself to the
conduct of Colonel Felder, who is posing as a prosecuting attorney and
wanting five thousand dollars from the people of the City . . . The affiant
does not believe [Felder is] anxious to prosecute the men under arrest.

Whatever the affidavit's provenance, Lanford now possessed a docu-
ment that could scuttle Felder. After locking the statement in a safe, the
detective chief made his move.

On Sunday, May 18, Felder picked up the telephone at his home in the
North Atlanta suburb of Buckhead and heard a familiar voice. Arthur S.
Colyar, Jr., a self-described freelance writer and investigator who'd assisted
the Colonel in previous adventures, was calling to say that Lanford had
obtained the Coleman affidavit. Furthermore, Colyar implied that he knew
a disgruntled police employee who for a price would provide Felder with
the item before it could be used against him. His curiosity piqued, the
Colonel invited Colyar to confer with him the following afternoon.

At the appointed hour, Colyar, accompanied by none other than C. Gay
February— Lanford's secretary and the man who'd penned the fake affi-
davits at the heart of the 1910 police scandal— appeared at Felder's office to
broker a deal. The terms: For $1,000 and freedom from prosecution, Febru-
ary would turn over not just the Coleman statement but a graft list reveal-
ing that Beavers and Lanford, their crackdown on the restricted district
notwithstanding, were on the take from a new generation of madams in far-
flung locales. Now genuinely intrigued, Felder agreed to another session,
this one on neutral ground.

Around 3 p.m. on Wednesday, May 21, Thomas Felder entered the
Williams House, an aging but still popular hotel located on Forsyth Street a
few blocks north of the National Pencil Company. Awaiting him in Room
31 were Colyar, February and an innocuous-looking wooden chest. Nestled
imperceptibly beneath a slightly ajar drawer were two transmitters. Several
red wires hidden in the crevices of the chest snaked away from these cun-
ningly positioned bugs, disappearing into the keyhole of a door that opened

108 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

into an adjoining room. Behind that door was a Dictograph with its opera-
tor, headphones clamped over his ears, standing by.

After voicing a few pleasantries, Felder broached the subject that had
brought the men together.

"Now what I say to you is strictly confidential," he began. "Day before
yesterday, I saw Woodward."

"You saw Woodward, Monday?" Colyar asked.

"Yes. Woodward says now it is all right for you to get the papers, and we
will pay you for them."

At this point, February entered the discussion.

"Let me understand you. You want this Coleman affidavit and all other
Phagan affidavits that I can get hold of?"

"Yes," Felder answered. "Colyar told me that he was to have the evi-
dence that would get those two chiefs out of commission."

"Will $1,000 be paid if we can get the papers?" Colyar inquired.

"Yes," Felder said.

As swimmingly as it all had gone, the conversation ended on a discordant
note when Colyar proposed the East Lake Country Club, a golfing resort
just beyond city limits, as the spot to consummate the transaction. Fearful of
receiving stolen documents outside Atlanta, Felder blanched. He wanted to
do the deed in town. Thus the talks broke off. Yet prior to departing, the
Colonel agreed to summon several associates to continue negotiations.

Late Wednesday afternoon, the second shift began arriving at the Williams
House. First came one of Felder's associates, E. O. Miles, but when Mayor
Jimmy Woodward and Charles C Jones materialized, the magnitude of Col-
yar's catch revealed itself.

"Do you think Frank murdered that girl?" Colyar was soon asking
Miles.

"I never have believed it," Miles replied. "I think the whole case was
handled badly. They had an extra on the street at 6:30. They should have
never allowed all the persons they did on the premises. Just after the mur-
der there were only a few scents and tracks, and the man who did the mur-
der could have easily been tracked. They should have looked for footprints
and fingerprints."

Colyar then posed the same question to Woodward.

SKULDUGGERY IO9

"Phagan case?" the mayor grunted. "I think it has been mighty mussed
up."

After getting these attacks on the record, Colyar maneuvered his prey onto
even more dangerous grounds.

"Did you tell Tom Felder," he asked Woodward, "that you authorized
Felder that if he got the proof for you, you would see that he got paid
for it?"

"I told Felder," the mayor replied, "that on matters of this kind that I
am satisfied that certain parties would be willing to pay the money."

Woodward, in essence, had endorsed the payoff, but Colyar wanted the
mayor to state that he was willing to countenance theft.

"Only two men can get the evidence," Colyar said. "February and Chief
Lanford."

"Get anything that looks like graft," Woodward answered. "I don't care
who it hits, and especially Beavers."

With that, everything— even the spot where the transaction would be com-
pleted (Miles didn't object to East Lake)— was settled, and Woodward
departed, followed soon thereafter by Miles and Jones, who'd been notica-
bly reticent throughout the meeting.

Charles C. Jones may have been, as one reporter later put it, "too foxy" for
the Dictograph, but Thomas Felder and the others weren't so nimble. Not
that many folks could have outmaneuvered this prototypic electronic sur-
veillance device. Nonetheless, Newport Lanford wasn't taking chances. In
fact, he spent much of the next day securing notarized statements from
everyone involved in the sting. The plan was to arrest Felder, stolen papers
in hand, at the East Lake Country Club, then deluge the press with a bliz-
zard of transcripts and depositions. With one flourish, the detective chief
intended to vanquish not only the individuals who'd expressed doubts
regarding the department's Phagan investigation but the cabal of sin mon-
gerers and cosmopolites who opposed Decatur Street's overall war on
wickedness.

There was, however, a central player in the drama whose motives Lan-
ford had not examined. On paper, 46-year-old Arthur Colyar seemed reli-
able. The son of a former publisher of the Nashville Banner and grandson of

110 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

a former governor of Tennessee, he'd said his only interest in the Felder
case was journalistic (he claimed he wanted to write an expose of municipal
corruption), and the detective chief had believed him. This was a mistake.

Colyar was one of the subtlest knaves ever to hit Atlanta, and as with so
many dishonest souls, he infused every mendacity with an element of truth.
His interest in Felder actually was journalistic— just not in the way the
police imagined. Sometime on Thursday, May 22, Colyar paid a call at the
Journal's newsroom. Toting a valise stuffed with copies of the Coleman affi-
davit, the Williams House transcript and other documents connected with
the probe, Colyar was in the market to sell. And as it turned out, the Jour-
nal's editors, desperate to scoop the Georgian, were in the market to buy.

On Friday, May 23— the day before Lanford intended to apprehend his
quarry— Atlanta was once again bombarded with headlines. Roared the
Journals front-page banner:

COL. THOMAS B. FELDER DICTOGRAPHED BY CITY DETECTIVES

Beneath this screamer, the paper ran out everything it had. Here were
enough scintillating comments and juicy depositions to keep Atlantans en-
thralled for days. More significant, the material portrayed Felder as a slick
grafter and intimated that sinister forces were trying to derail the Phagan
investigation.

Though Chiefs Beavers and Lanford were initially incensed by Colyar's
premature publications, they soon realized how utterly their enemies had
been routed and pressed their advantage. Boomed the double-deck banner
atop the May 25 Journal:

"FELDER IS THE MOUTHPIECE OF THE VICE GANG,"
DECLARES CHIEF JAS. L. BEAVERS

Herein, Beavers vowed he would battle the forces embodied by Felder "to
the finish if I die in my tracks," asserting that "the issue is now between the
decent people of the city and the gangsters who have controlled the city for
years. This has outgrown the Phagan case and has assumed the proportions
of the hottest fight in the political history of Atlanta."

And a fierce fight it was. Felder began his defense by distributing a 5,000-
word broadside to all three newspapers. In this statement, the Colonel,
claiming that the Williams House transcripts had been doctored, dismissed
the entire episode as "but the symptom or manifestation of one of the most
diabolical conspiracies ever hatched by a venal and corrupt 'system.' "Then
the Colonel threw his haymaker, accusing his accusers of the very offense of

SKULDUGGERY III

which he stood accused. Namely, he charged Beavers and Lanford with
undermining the prosecution of Leo Frank.

"I would have the people of this community know," the Colonel improb-
ably proclaimed, "that from the day and hour of the arrest of Leo Frank,
charged with the murder of little Mary Phagan, Newport Lanford and his
coconspirators have left no stone unturned in their efforts to shield and
protect the suspect. [They] have winked at forgery, suborned perjury, and
employed every base agency their low and groveling criminal instincts
could contrive and conjure."

As to what possible motive Beavers and Lanford might have had for
deflecting suspicion from Frank, Felder was quoted as having told an asso-
ciate: "This damned fellow Lanford knows that Frank killed [Mary Pha-
gan], but he has sold out to the Jews for big money which he is getting and
has got, and he is trying to discredit myself in his effort to protect this
damned Jew."

The two chiefs didn't let Felder's allegations go uncontested. Regarding
his claim that the Dictograph records had been doctored, Lanford simply
released the name of the operator who'd transcribed the session— George
Gentry, nephew of the president of Southern Bell Telephone. And as for the
accusation that the police were in Frank's pocket, the detective chief tersely
and credibly responded: "It is easy for anyone to see that there is no police
plot to protect Frank." Then, in a sally worthy of Felder himself, Lanford
added: "As for Tom Felder's charges of graft, all Atlanta knows they are
untrue, unfounded and are but the explosions of a distorted brain— a brain
deformed by years of treachery."

Even more damaging to Felder, the press seconded Lanford's dismissal
of the suggestion that the police had sold out to Jewish money. Noted
the Constitution: "Up until the time Mr. Felder had begun to 'bombard'
the public with statements of his belief in Frank's guilt, it was generally
believed he was in the suspect's employ."

For the embattled denizens of Decatur Street, Felder had turned out to
be a blessing. Yet Beavers and Lanford were unable to capitalize any fur-
ther on their good fortune, and this was because of the man who'd enticed
Felder to take part in the Williams House sessions.

"Career of A. S. Colyar Reads Like Some Story in the Arabian Nights,"
declared the headline atop the May 24 Constitution. The paper's antipolice
sentiments notwithstanding, the facts presented in its account were indict-
ing. From youth, Colyar had exhibited a talent for deception. As a young
man visiting Mexico under false pretenses, he'd been received "with great
eclat" at ceremonies attended by the nation's president. What made the
incident something more than a college-boy prank was that Colyar had

112 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

then used his bogus credentials to bilk the American ambassador out of a
sum variously reported as between $1,000 and $10,000. Subsequently, Col-
yar was admitted to the Middle Tennessee Insane Asylum. Soon thereafter,
he fled his home state and had henceforth essentially run amuck, making a
living by romancing rich women and hoodwinking church congregations.
Though Colyar did once serve jail time, the Constitution reported that
"probably no man in Tennessee has imposed so successfully upon the pub-
lic and has escaped so lightly."

Within hours after news of his criminal past hit the streets, Colyar was
under arrest on fraud charges stemming from an outstanding warrant, and
Felder and Mayor Woodward were back in business. Through a friend,
Felder accused the police of fraternizing with "a moral degenerate." Mean-
while, the mayor cackled: "Now isn't Colyar a fine specimen to be hired by
the city detectives." Attempting to deflect such barbs, Chief Beavers main-
tained: "He [Colyar] may be a crook, but it is no uncommon thing for one
crook to turn up another." Felder and Woodward, however, would have
none of it. Indeed, the Colonel proposed that Beavers "be stripped naked
and ridden through Atlanta on a cart with a sign reading 'Reform Chief
hung from his neck."

Where once the Phagan investigation had merely been in danger of
becoming a jurisdictional squabble, it was now degenerating into a calum-
nious rhubarb pitting faction against faction, class against class, faith against
faith.

The first casualty was the Burns Agency, which withdrew from the inves-
tigation on May 27. In announcing the decision, C. W. Tobie noted: "This is
a helluva family row and no place for a stranger. I came down here to inves-
tigate a murder case, not to engage in petty politic[s]. All of this stuff seems
to have been brewing for some time, and it has just now come to the sur-
face." With that, Tobie returned to Chicago, and William Burns was denied
the chance to look into Mary Phagan's murder while clues were still fresh.

For Thomas Felder, the repercussions were worse. As far as the Phagan
case was concerned, the Colonel was finished. Though he would later suc-
ceed in getting a grand jury to investigate the Atlanta police, he had
revealed himself to be not just a servant of Bacchus but a cad and a cur.

In the end, however, the Dictograph episode's only true victim was
Frank. The superintendent would always be suspected of having employed
Felder, and though the charge was never proven, it was never laid to rest.
While it was likely true, as Luther Rosser would subsequently assert, that
"Felder does not, nor has he at any time, directly or indirectly, represented
Frank," Frank's counsel failed to address, much less explain, why such
notable Jews as Lowenstein and Hirsch lent their names to Felder's cause.
The most charitable explanation was that these men, fearful for one of their

SKULDUGGERY 113

own, were duped. Even so, what many Atlantans took away from the
episode was the impression that the Jewish community was in business with
the likes of Charles C. Jones. Thanks to Felder the anti-Semitism Atlanta's
Jews had perhaps prematurely feared might enter the case found a place to
hang its hat. This was not, however, the Colonel's most damaging bequest to
Frank. Felder did his real damage at headquarters. As Rosser would later
put it: "Once Felder charged Newport Lanford with favoring Frank, the
detective settled in his mind the guilt of Frank and from that moment bent
every energy of his department, not in finding the murderer, but in trying to
prove to the public that Felder was wrong in charging him with trying to
shield Frank."

The Dictograph scandal was not without survivors. No matter how badly
Beavers, Lanford and Woodward had acquitted themselves, they had done
nothing out of character and were thus seen no differently than in the past.
But there was only one real winner in the affair— Hugh Dorsey. Exhibiting
uncanny dexterity, Dorsey had perched himself not just above the fray but
in a position that allowed him to keep an eye on both Felder and Decatur
Street. Following his initial daylong briefing of C. W. Tobie, he'd met regu-
larly with Felder regarding the Burns Agency's involvement, and if Chiefs
Beavers and Lanford had been sent packing, he would have been ready to
embrace a new police regime. Simultaneously, however, he had advised
Lanford on the legality of Dictographing Felder and had assured the chief
that it was "perfectly legitimate." Dorsey had played both sides, and he'd
done it with verve. When it had briefly looked as if Lanford might be unable
to locate a Dictograph, the solicitor, knowing full well the chiefs intentions,
had contacted Felder and devilishly sought to borrow his. As it turned out,
the Colonel was unable to supply the gadget and was thus saved from being
hoisted by his own petard.

Adroit, brazen, poker-faced— Hugh Dorsey was all these things, but native
cunning could carry him only so far. Weathering the Dictograph storm
was one matter, but presenting a case to the grand jury was another. Con-
sidering the skeptical response accorded the coroner's jury's finding, Leo
Frank's indictment was hardly a foregone conclusion.

While the Felder affair had raged, Dorsey had devoted most of his
efforts to refining his case. Postponing other trials and twice delaying
the grand jury sessions themselves, the solicitor— aided by Starnes, Camp-
bell, the mystery detective Frank Pond and an assistant named Newton
Garner— had interviewed scores of witnesses. Not surprisingly, much of the
intelligence filtering into Dorsey from both the Pinkertons and the police
focused on the charges of sexual impropriety against Frank.

114 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Whatever the ultimate utility of the intelligence, Dorsey now knew that
some of the specific accusations— among them the "joy ride of heaven"
anecdote and the item suggesting that Frank and a girl who looked like
Mary Phagan had created a scene at Terminal Station the day before the
murder —were false, products, in the first case, of an overheated mind; in the
second, according to the Pinkerton files, of an instance of mistaken identity.
Dorsey also had reason to question the story that had convinced many
Atlantans that Frank had lusted after little Mary— the story George Epps
had told to the inquest. In the wake of Epps's testimony, Pinkerton agent
L. P. Whitfield had visited the victim's mother at her Bellwood home. What
she said, had it been made public, could well have recast the investigation:

Mrs. Coleman also stated that she . . . never heard Mary speak of any boy
friends and that the statement that George Epps made . . . that Mary was a
chum of Epps and that he had an engagement with Mary at a local drug
store was to her mind incorrect, as she had heard Mary say that she
detested Epps and Mrs. Coleman is sure that Epps did not have any
engagement with Mary on Saturday afternoon as stated. Mrs. Coleman
further stated that she has never heard Mary say anything about Superin-
tendent Frank only as an official of the Pencil Company.

Owing to the identity of the Pinkerton agent involved, Dorsey may well
have discounted Mrs. Coleman's remarks. As the case had progressed,
Whitfield, unlike his rival Scott, had begun to believe that Frank was inno-
cent. Nonetheless, Mrs. Coleman's statement— which was, of course, also in
the hands of defense attorneys— was not going to go away.

Yet even as some of the allegations against Frank were coming under
attack, other charges were flooding in. On May 1 1, the Constitution devoted
a chunk of its front page to the story of Robert House, a private detective
who alleged that on several occasions in 1912, he'd observed Frank and an
unidentified girl enter a secluded grove near the Druid Hills subdivision.
Eventually, House said, he'd followed the couple, adding that when Frank
realized he and his consort had been spotted, he'd begged for considera-
tion. "I don't want you to see the girl," House recalled Frank saying. "I
admit that we came here for immoral purpose. Please don't make a case
against us or arrest us. It would disgrace us both. We will leave instantly."
According to House, he'd initially let the matter drop, informing the police
of it only after the Phagan murder.

Hard upon the House revelations, Dorsey received a deposition signed
by a madam named Nina Formby alleging that on the night of the murder,
Frank— ostensibly a good customer— had called her looking for a room in
which he could dispose of Mary Phagan's body. The Formby affidavit, dated

SKULDUGGERY 115

May 11 and taken in Newport Lanford's office by Detectives W.T. Chewn-
ing and J. N. Norris, was from the start a subject of dispute. Lanford insisted
that the statement tied the crime to Frank. But in a May 14 interview, a
"boarding and assignation house" proprietor named Etta Mills told a
Pinkerton man that Mrs. Formby was untrustworthy. "I asked Miss Mills
what she knew of the Famby [sic] woman," noted agent W. D. MacWorth,
"and she stated that the Famby woman was fast and a hard drinker, there-
fore, irresponsible for her talk." When reports that her statement was being
questioned hit the press, Mrs. Formby replied that Frank's supporters were
trying to bribe her, telling the Constitution that on several occasions she'd
been offered large sums to leave town until the Phagan trial ended.

After weighing the character evidence, Dorsey ultimately concluded
that Frank had frequently used his position to force himself upon female
employees and that such an attempt had led to Mary Phagan's murder. As
he would later assert: "Extraordinary passion goaded on this man." Just as
surely, however, Dorsey realized that unless the defense introduced the
issue at trial, any references to Frank's past would be inadmissible.

Which was why even as he was trying to sort through the mass of sexu-
ally tinged evidence, Dorsey was preparing a circumstantial— and far more
circumspect— case. At its core, his presentation to the grand jury would
revolve around time: the time Mary Phagan left home, the time she reached
the factory and, most critical, the time of death. Though Dr. Harris had
yet to complete his lab work and Dorsey would therefore be unable to ad-
vance an exact hour to the grand jury, the preliminary examination had sug-
gested that little Mary had died around 12:15— about the time Frank said
she'd departed his office, about the time Monteen Stover said his office was
empty.

The Phagan grand jury convened at 1 1 a.m. on Friday, May 23, with twenty-
one of the twenty-three jurors present. Journalists, of course, were barred
by law from attending, but Dorsey took no chances. To make sure that nei-
ther prying eyes nor Dictographs penetrated the Thrower Building cham-
ber in which the sessions were held, doors and windows were shut tight,
crevices sealed with papers. Yet even if a reporter had managed to evade
the defenses, he wouldn't have learned much, for Dorsey had decided to
present only the bare amount of evidence needed to secure an indictment.
Despite these precautions, some of what went on during the two days of
hearings leaked, for the Journal reconstructed a rough outline of Dorsey's
presentation. Relying on the testimony of R. P. Barrett, the machinist who
discovered the bloodstains and hair on the factory's second floor, the solici-
tor abandoned his flirtation with the basement as the murder site, opening

Il6 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

his case by arguing that the crime occurred in the metal room. Dorsey then
called Dr. Hurt to establish the time of death. Hurt was followed by Mon-
teen Stover. Next came B. B. Haslett, one of the detectives who'd assisted in
the investigation, and James M. Gantt, the dismissed bookkeeper. Both tes-
tified to Frank's anxiety— the former on the day of his arrest, the latter on
the day of the killing.

Advancing a motive, however, was not so easy. As had recently been
made public, Dr. Hurt had reached the startling conclusion that Mary Pha-
gan had not been raped. With Dr. Harris still on the sidelines, Dorsey was
forced to lean on the testimony of two nonexperts: Sergeant L. S. Dobbs,
one of the responding officers, and undertaker Will Gheesling.

The thrust of Dorsey's case was straightforward: Frank, after raping
Mary Phagan, murdered her and then attempted to do away with the
remains. According to the Journal, the most telling aspect of the solicitor's
presentation lay not in his theory but in the fact that he evidently did
not adduce any physical evidence. Regarding the results of the tests he'd
ordered on Lee's shirt and the red spots found near Barrett's workstation,
Dorsey was silent. More remarkably, he didn't address what many saw as
the crime's most significant clues— the murder notes.

If the grand jurors were disturbed by this lack of detail, they gave little
indication of it, evidently taking on faith Dorsey's assurances that at the
appropriate moment, he would reveal all. Once the solicitor left the body to
its deliberations, its members needed but five minutes to return an indict-
ment against Frank. As for Lee, whose case had also been under considera-
tion, the jurors deferred action. He would be held as a material witness
should the state need him later.

Thus Hugh Dorsey had cleared the first hurdle, and what made the vic-
tory impressive was the fact that like most such bodies, the grand jury
was comprised of businessmen who might have been expected to sympa-
thize with Leo Frank. The group's foreman, L. H. Beck, was president of
Atlanta's largest hardware concern. More significantly, four Jews— George
A. Gershon, A. L. Guthman, Sol Benjamin and future Chamber of Com-
merce president Victor Hugo Kriegshaber— sat on the panel. While it's not
known how these men voted (only twelve yeas were required to indict), all
except Kriegshaber (who was out of town) had been on hand. This is a
notable fact, suggesting that initially, Dorsey may well have convinced three
of Frank's coreligionists that his case against the superintendent was sound.

Not surprisingly, Dorsey failed to convince many other Atlanta Jews.
Even less surprisingly, he failed to convince the Georgian. "State Faces Big
Task in Trial of Frank," proclaimed the headline atop its piece on the grand
jury's findings. Focusing on the state's lack of physical evidence, the Hearst
sheet predicted that Luther Rosser was going to have a field day in court:

SKULDUGGERY 117

It is regarded as likely that the defense will claim first of all that the
State has failed to establish Frank's connection with the crime. The defense
will represent that the most the State has done is to establish that he had
the opportunity to commit the murder. Frank never was seen with the girl,
either on the day of the strangling or before. It is not known that he ever
spoke to her except in connection with her work. None of Frank's clothing
has been found with blood stains upon it. No finger prints upon the girl's
body or clothes were identified as his. None of his personal belongings
were found near the girl's body. Absolutely nothing was discovered in the
search of the detectives that fastened the crime on him.

The Georgian also pointed out that there were others in the factory at the
time of the slaying, "this fact opening the way to the argument that it need
not have been Frank who did it." Finally, the paper addressed one of the
more recent sexual allegations, arguing that even if verified, it was irrele-
vant:

Should the State be able to prove beyond a doubt that it was Frank whom
the park guard discovered, the defense will still be able to say that this fact
no more connects Frank with the murder than it does hundreds of other
persons.

Though the Georgian was the only paper to question the grand jury's
decision, it is notable that at this critical moment, no one unconnected with
the investigation praised it. No one, in short, proclaimed the case closed. In
fact, the Constitution— whatever its allegiances to Dorsey— didn't even
report Frank's indictment on its front page, playing it, instead, inside.

SEVEN

That any Negro would lead Hugh Dorsey, the investigators and most
Atlantans out of the wilderness of uncertainty and acrimony and
onto the high plain of clarity and accord was strange enough, but
that a shiftless, no-count Negro would emerge at this juncture in the case
and like some Delphic oracle issue pronouncements that would ultimately
be embraced over the word of a white man suggests nothing less than a
miracle.

James Conley had been arrested back on May i after E. F. Holloway, the
pencil company's day watchman, spotted the Negro sweeper standing at a
second-floor factory water cooler washing red stains out of an old blue
work shirt. His startled reaction— he evidently dropped the garment into a
recess in the floor— suggested he had something to hide, but once he was in
custody, he told a straight tale, swearing that he'd just been trying to rinse
away some rust marks because he had nothing else to wear to the coroner's
inquest. Typical, thought the detectives, who agreed to release Conley as
soon as a chemical analysis of the stains was completed.

During the early days of his incarceration, Jim, as Conley was gener-
ally known, had done nothing to attract his captors' attention. Squat and
chunky with a powerful torso and coarsely handsome features framed by
a broad forehead and prominent jaw and dominated by a strong nose
and slabbed lips, he'd seemed unworthy of curiosity. Only later, noting his
creamy ginger-root complexion, mustache and almond-shaped eyes, would
a reporter observe: "Jim Conley isn't a cornfield negro. He's more of the
present-day type of city darkey."

Jim's initial statement to John Black and Harry Scott— a statement the
detectives didn't even bother to take until fifteen days after his arrest— had
merely confirmed what first impressions suggested. In a long recitation of
his murder-day itinerary, he'd told the investigators:

On Saturday, April 26, 1913, 1 arose between 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. and ate
my breakfast. At 10:30 I left the house . . . and went to Peters Street and
visited a number of saloons ... I purchased a half pint of rye whiskey from
a negro who was walking along Peters Street about 11:00 a.m., I paying 40

A CLEAN NIGGER 119

cents for this whiskey. I visited the Butt-In saloon and went back to the
pool tables and saw three colored men shooting dice, and I joined them
and won 90 cents from them. I then purchased some beer, paying 15 cents.
I then walked up the street and visited Earley 's beer saloon, purchased two
beers and wine, paying ten cents for same. This was all the money I spent
on Peters Street, and I arrived home at 2:30 p.m. and I found L. Jones
[Lorena Jones, Conley's common-law wife] there and she asked me if I
had any money. I replied yes, and gave her $3.50 (one dollar in greenback,
and the rest silver money). I drew $3.75 from the pencil factory on Fri-
day ... At 3:30 or 4:00 p.m. Saturday, April 26th, I purchased 15 cents
worth of beer and then returned to the house ... I remained at home Sat-
urday night.

Yet even if the police had discovered a discrepancy in Conley's account,
he still would have been free from suspicion, for he swore he could not do
what the Phagan girl's killer or accomplice, one of whom surely authored
the murder notes, could do: write. No, he was just shuffling Jim, dark and
dim. As another reporter noted: "He talks slowly and deliberately with a
kind of African drawl and some of his vocabulary is so peculiarly 'niggerish'
that it is hard to distinguish, at times, what he means."

Little is known about the 29-year-old Conley's youth beyond the fact
that he was born in Atlanta and that his parents worked at the busy Capital
City Laundry on Mitchell Street. But if his job history can be taken as a
guide, his life had been filled with hardship and trouble. During his teens, he
sawed wood at a lumberyard. At twenty-one, he hired on at a South Forsyth
Street stable. After a year grooming horses, he graduated to handling them,
laboring first for Orr's Stationery Company as a delivery boy, then for a
physician as a buggy driver. In 191 1, Jim went to work at the National Pen-
cil Company. Initially, he was assigned to the respected and visible position
of elevator operator, but not long before the Phagan murder he was busted
down to sweeper and was evidently in danger of sinking lower. By all
accounts, he had a drinking problem, and according to E. F. Hollo way, it had
grown intolerable. "About a week before the crime was committed," the
day watchman told the Georgian, "the forelady of the trimming and finish-
ing department, Miss Eulah May Flowers, went to the top floor of the build-
ing to look over the stock of boxes. When Conley was not sweeping, he was
supposed to fill the box-bin with boxes. When Miss Flowers moved toward
the bin to look in she stumbled over a form. She screamed and fell back. It
was Conley. He was dead drunk."

Neither this position— prone— nor this condition— liquored up— was
new to Conley. He had been arrested so many times for drunk and disor-
derly conduct that he'd adopted the alias of Willie Conley in the hope that

120 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

he could stay one step ahead of the law. Most of his crimes had resulted in
mere fines, but on several occasions, the offenses (among them a rock-
throwing incident and an armed robbery attempt) had been more serious,
and he had served two sentences on the chain gang. Three months before
the Phagan killing, Jim had fired a shot at Lorena Jones, whom he did
not hold in high esteem. (In his initial statement, he told the police:
"This woman is not my wife ... I have [only] been having intercourse with
Lorine.") Though Jim's aim proved faulty, he did graze another Negro
woman standing nearby. The incident earned him a stay in jail.

Here again, though, none of this prompted questions by the detectives
probing the Phagan murder. To them, ignorance, inebriation and a predis-
position to violent outbursts were common black vices. That Conley might
in reality have been a complex character, that he might have emerged from
a society that had inculcated him with a heritage as various and an intelli-
gence as keen as any white man's, was not considered.

Like the more populous and infinitely more powerful white city it stretched
across, in writer W.E.B. Du Bois's phrase, "like a great dumbbell . . . with
one great center in the east and a smaller one in the west," black Atlanta
was deeply divided along lines of class and wealth. Similarly, the colored
masses not only outnumbered the erudite few, they made the bigger noise.

Vine City— black Atlanta's western hub and Jim Conley's home— lay
just beyond the spires of downtown's Terminal Station. This pie-shaped sec-
tion of eroded red-clay hills and gullies was wedged between a railroad
right-of-way and the all-black Atlanta University complex, which included
not just AU but Clark, Spelman and Morehouse Colleges. The neighbor-
hood had accommodated a majority of the new arrivals who since 1890 had
doubled the capital's Negro population. Here, in shotgun shanties lining
unpaved, refuse-choked streets, unskilled men, women and children lured
from the depressed agricultural counties to the south by, as one put it, "the
smell of money" inhaled instead the acrid aromas of raw sewage and disap-
pointment. Here, human suffering was quantifiable: the average life span
was thirty-five years.

Vine City's primary export to white Atlanta, at least as measured by the
press, consisted of gambling, guzzling and gunplay. The neighborhood was
the site of countless "Negro Monte Carlos," gathering spots, in the Journal's
estimation, for the "colored man who could no more keep out of a crap
game than he could resist a slice of red watermelon on the hottest day of
July." Then there were the section's many "blind tigers," sources of refresh-
ment and, like the illicit casinos, objects of frequent police raids. In these

A CLEAN NIGGER 121

parts, things were lively, and when they were not, they were often deadly.
The April 2, 19 13, Constitution carried a typical dispatch out of Vine City:

After an evening's festival and entertainment, a score of negro merry-
makers at 45 Rock Street were thrown into excitement when shooting
broke out among several of the celebrators and one of them, George Ben-
son, dropped down dead at the hour of midnight. From midnight till dawn
of yesterday morning police and detectives were busy searching the neigh-
borhood arresting all they could find who were known to have been at the
ill-fated carousal.

Sooner or later, many Vine City residents appeared before Judge Nash
Broyles, the longtime magistrate of Atlanta's Recorder's Court. "Jedge
Briles," as he was known to blacks, meted out justice to a disproportionately
high number of Negroes (of 14,045 cases tried in 1900, 9,500 involved
blacks). For reporters, the judge's courtroom was a prime source of mate-
rial, and for novices, a visit constituted a rite of passage. Shortly after
Harold Ross arrived in Atlanta, the Journal dispatched him there. Writing
in his characteristic first-person-plural voice, he recorded what he saw:

Being of that vast class of society which calls itself respectable, we have
never been in police court before and are, therefore, shocked by what con-
fronts us. Negroes— scores of them— banked up on tiers of benches on one
side of a railing which divides the room in half, a dozen policemen lolling in
chairs near the judge's rostrum— all of this is disconcerting. It is not even a
pleasing sight. But we are out to see the police court! So we will subdue for
the nonce our first and decidedly respectable inclination to leave and take
seats among the policemen.

Most reporters who spent time in Judge Broyles's court found the assign-
ment more congenial than Ross's account suggests he did, cranking out
sketches that reinforced white Atlantans' views. A Constitution account of
some byplay that ensued one afternoon in 1910 during a debate between
Broyles and a Negro defendant regarding the identification of a certain
powdery white substance is emblematic:

"Shucks, jedge, I'll just show you dat ain't no cocaine." Two long, black
fingers trembling with eagerness shot across the bar of justice and dipped
into the little black box which Recorder Broyles held in his hand and an
instant later, Ben Green, a denizen of Darktown, was smacking his lips in
absolute disregard of fines or jail sentences. Ben had had his "dose."

122 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Predictably, the citizens of Vine City were not amused by Nash Broyles.
Over the years he had sentenced thousands of them to the Atlanta Stock-
ade. The prison— which even now dominates a high bluff on the city's east-
ern fringes— took its cue architecturally from the Tower, right down to the
crenellated ramparts. But where the Tower merely looked medieval, the
Stockade was a genuine throwback. A 1909 investigation by the Georgian
determined that cell blocks were infested by rats. Inmates wore riveted
shackles, and troublemakers were strapped into the "bucking machine," a
device of the warden's own invention. Among the blacks tortured in this
apparatus was a thirteen-year-old girl who later died. As Judge Broyles
freely admitted, he would never consign white children to the stockade, for
"to do so would mean their complete ruin."

That Atlanta's Negroes did not demand better treatment— that they did
not rise up in protest— was due to the vigilant efforts of the twin hobgoblins
the city's whites had contrived to keep them in their place: Jim Crow and
Judge Lynch.

Atlanta was the capital not only of the New South but of the Jim Crow
South. In 1905, the Georgia general assembly, responding to the influx of
blacks pouring into the city, had enacted one of the region's first Jim Crow
ordinances, the Separate Park Law. Soon thereafter, restaurants, bars, train
cars, barbershops, elevators, the Grant Park Zoo, haberdasheries, even the
Carnegie Library were segregated by race.

Atlanta's Negroes were also held in check by an ominous extralegal
authority. Between 1882 and 1930, Georgia recorded 508 lynchings (only
Mississippi eclipsed this number). "In almost every other state," one his-
torian later noted, "the practice hit a peak between 1880 and 1900 and
remained steady or declined thereafter; however Georgians lynched more
blacks between 1900 and 1920 than they had in the previous twenty years."
Most such atrocities took place in rural communities, but not always.

On a Saturday afternoon in late September 1906, Atlanta's 3 afternoon
newspapers— the Journal, the Georgian and the Evening News (soon to
merge with the Georgian)— had reported the rape of a white woman by a
"black fiend." With the state having just endured a gubernatorial campaign
that turned on the issue of disfranchising Negroes, the stories were incendi-
ary. Still, a disaster might have been averted had it not been for the News. In
the space of just a few hours, the paper issued several extras, each bannered
by irresponsible and fallacious headlines: two assaults, third assault,
fourth assault. By sundown, some 5,000 angry whites had gathered on
Decatur Street. From the top of a car, Mayor Jimmy Woodward had begged
for calm, but the crowd ignored him. By 11:00, the mob had increased to
11,000, and its members were well armed— one hardware store sold $16,000

A CLEAN NIGGER 123

worth of guns and ammunition that evening. It was at this point that shots
rang out. The two black barbers on duty at Herndon's Barber Shop offered
no resistance, but they were murdered anyway, their bodies dumped at the
foot of the Marietta Street monument to the bard of the New South, Henry
Grady. Thereafter, chaos reigned. As one contingent of rioters bludgeoned
a crippled black shoeshine boy in the middle of Peachtree Street, another
stormed a hotel, killing three Negro passersby. A third group breached a
trolley station and began pulling black passengers from their seats. All the
while, the police refused to intercede, and Governor Joseph M. Terrell ini-
tially turned down a request to declare martial law.

By the time the militia was summoned, the worst was over. When Sunday
dawned, 20 Negroes lay dead.

Sunday night, when the reassembled white mob marched again— this
time on Darktown, the east side counterpart to Vine City— the torch-
carrying vanguard was met by a hail of bullets, and its members retreated.
As the evening wore on, several other assaults were similarly repulsed.
Atlanta's Negroes, armed with guns shipped south in caskets earlier in the
summer by a Chicago undertaker, had made their stand. While fighting
would resume on Monday, black leaders cited the defense of Darktown as
the turning point in the conflict. The irony here was not lost on these lead-
ers. In the words of William Crogman, future president of Clark College:
"The whites kill . . . good men. But the lawless element, the element we
have condemned fights back, and it is to these people that we owe our lives."

When the rioting ceased, 25 Negroes were dead, and 150 had been
wounded. (Just one white was listed as killed, although years later a black
mortician asserted that the police, striving to minimize casualties, ordered
him to bury several whites in Negro cemeteries under cover of darkness).
Moreover, a terrifying message had been delivered. A letter to the Geor-
gian's editor put it succinctly: "Let's continue to kill all negroes who commit
the unmentionable crime and make eunichs of all new male issues before
they are eight days old." Though such surgical solutions were not in this
instance implemented, the effect of such talk was profound. In the wake
of the 1906 clash, "good darkeys" bowed and shuffled a bit more obsequi-
ously, while "bad niggers" juked and jived a bit more cartoonishly. Either
way, they kept out of white folks' line of fire by sinking into minstrel show
Negroism. (For those who protested, retribution was swift. Jesse Max Bar-
ber, editor of Atlanta's Voice of the Negro, fled to Chicago after the author-
ities threatened to sentence him to the chain gang unless he retracted a
letter to the New York World accusing Atlanta's newspapers of instigating
the riot.) The extent to which such behavior was an act varied from indi-
vidual to individual, but one thing is certain: Only a damn black fool would

124 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

not have acted like a damn black fool had he found himself in Jim Con-
ley's shoes.

Despite the fact that Jim Crow and Judge Lynch were so firmly ensconced,
an altogether different black Atlanta— one of financial and cultural attain-
ment—was arising a few blocks north of Darktown as well as around the
west-side Negro colleges. This community was spurred by catalysts from
both without and within Dixie.

The catalyst from without was the very embodiment of America's Robber
Baron might: John D. Rockefeller. Since 1882, when he donated $250 to the
struggling all-black Atlanta Female Baptist Seminary, Rockefeller, a devout
Baptist, had functioned as the great white angel to the city's education-
minded Negro aspirants. In 1884, when the Standard Oil magnate and his
wife, the former Laura Spelman, visited Atlanta to check on the seminary's
progress, the trustees changed the school's name to Spelman College. In the
wake of this emotional event, Rockefeller began buying land on Atlanta's
west side, providing the real estate not only for Spelman's expansion but for
two new colleges for Negro men— Clark and Morehouse. In 1886, Rocke-
feller Hall, Spelman's first brick building, was completed, and over the years
it had been joined by other impressive structures. By 1913, graduates noted
for their Christian zeal and Victorian manners were marching forth yearly
from these institutions.

The catalysts from within were, in their way, also Rockefelleresque—
visionary black capitalists who saw in the vacuum the Jim Crow South had
created fertile ground for businesses that could provide goods and services
to the neglected Negro market. On April 1, 1913, several hundred well-
dressed Negroes had gathered on Auburn Avenue, Atlanta's Great Black
Way, to dedicate the most visible manifestation of this homegrown Negro
achievement: the $110,000, five-story Odd Fellows Building, the city's first
office structure paid for and built by blacks and as such a symbol of the
race's strivings.

Like several of Atlanta's other notable Negro enterprises— most espe-
cially Standard Life Insurance and Atlanta Mutual Life— the Odd Fellows
offered something blacks could not obtain elsewhere: loans at fair rates. By
1916, the society boasted assets of $1 million.

In most cases, the fiscal well-being of fledgling black concerns like the
Odd Fellows was precarious. In the 1920s, the Odd Fellows, owing to a feud
among members, collapsed into receivership, while Standard Life fell into
the hands of outsiders. Still, that such operations had opened their doors at
all signaled a new day for Georgia blacks, and in the case of Atlanta Mutual

A CLEAN NIGGER 125

Life, which was a genuine and enduring success, the benefits were not just
monetary.

Atlanta Mutual was the brainchild of Alonzo F. Herndon, who domi-
nated not only the black community's finances but its politics (he helped
found the NAACP). And he owed it all to his skills in the tonsorial arts.
Simply put, Herndon gave a stylish haircut.

Born a slave, Herndon had opened his eponymously named barbershop
shortly after arriving in Atlanta in 1882. Due to his deft touch with a blade
and his elegant bearing, Herndon's business prospered from the start,
attracting an all-white clientele that included lawyers and politicians from
every part of Georgia. Eventually, Herndon moved uptown to Peachtree
Street, in 1913 expanding and redecorating his shop. Now Dixie's Beau
Brummels entered this manly sanctum through sixteen-foot mahogany-
and-beveled-glass doors (copies of a pair Herndon had admired during a
vacation to Paris) that opened into a room tiled floor to ceiling in white
marble and lit by bronze electric chandeliers. Lining the walls, twenty-three
chairs attended by liveried Negro barbers beckoned.

By keeping the South's white bosses talcumed and trimmed, Herndon
became a millionaire, and in 1905, he founded Atlanta Mutual. Within six
years, the business had grown from a one-room outfit into a behemoth
boasting 70,000 policyholders and 84 branch offices.

Herndon's enduring legacy to black Atlanta can be seen in the institu-
tions he endowed, institutions that not only provided a setting for Negro
society but cast spiritual and educational light into the firmament. At the
center of his elite black universe stood the First Congregational Church, a
stone chapel that to this day presides over Courtland Street in East Atlanta.
The building was erected in 1908 and featured a library, a small gym and
cooking facilities that were the envy of both black and white Christians
throughout the city. The men and women who filled the sanctuary on Sun-
days included lawyers, educators and doctors who gave their prayers to
God and their votes to the Republican Party. Testifying to the congrega-
tion's ties to the party of emancipation is the fact that President Theodore
Roosevelt attended the dedication services.

In the end, what made the First Congregational Church a force in black
Atlanta was its pastor. The Reverend Henry Hugh Proctor stood six feet six
inches tall, and out of doors he always wore a black Stetson and a long
black double-breasted jacket with a two-button flyaway tail. "When you
saw him walking down the street," recalled his friend and parishioner Kath-
leen Adams, "you knew he was a godly man. Small children pictured God as
looking like him." But Proctor was not godly just in bearing. Son of a Ten-
nessee slave, he was a graduate of Nashville's Fisk University and had stud-

126 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

ied at Yale's Divinity School. (He did not finish his doctorate, but he
completed a thesis entitled "The Theology of Slave Songs.")

Despite Proctor's academic affinity for Negro spirituals, his pulpit styl-
ings bore no resemblance to those soulfully gyrating, amen-riddled per-
orations that left congregations in so many of Atlanta's black houses of
worship slain in the spirit. Declared Kathleen Adams: "Reverend Proctor
was a teacher in his pulpit. His language was superb and dignified. The only
man I ever heard who matched him was W.E.B. Du Bois. Church was used
as a schoolroom."

Henry Hugh Proctor's friends included the great Negro leaders of the
era. When visiting Atlanta, Booker T. Washington usually stayed with him.
At the same time, Proctor was on good terms with the renowned educator's
avowed foe, Atlanta University's W.E.B. Du Bois, whose book The Souls of
Black Folk took Washington to task for capitulating to the white man's view
that black colleges should provide industrial as opposed to liberal arts edu-
cations.

That Proctor could maintain a relationship with a radical such as Du Bois
(the author, sociologist and NAACP cof ounder resigned from Atlanta Uni-
versity's faculty in 1910 after his militant opinions led to a clash with the
administration) bespoke great diplomatic skills, for he was himself a concil-
iator when it came to whites. Proctor's sermons were often homilies taken
from the lives of such men as Rockefeller and Roosevelt. Meanwhile, he
regularly solicited funds from the likes of Coca-Cola's Asa G. Candler.
Then there was the fact that his Negro critics accused him, so to speak, of
harboring Caucasians in the woodpile.

The charge against Proctor and his parishioners was based on skin pig-
mentation, but in a broader sense, it went to the heart of the divide that sep-
arated Atlanta's uptown blacks from their poor country cousins. Benjamin
Davis, publisher of the city's most combative Negro newspaper, the Atlanta
Independent, frequently articulated the complaint. In his editorials, Davis
accused Proctor and his flock of "having exclusive mulattoes in their society
and for their associates." He believed that the Congregationalists practiced
their own form of segregation.

Davis was particularly vexed by the sponsors of a 19 14 black medical
convention who asked that "only light-skinned Atlanta negroes" attend
their soiree. He also resented the fact that the Owls, Atlanta University's
most exclusive fraternity, selected members "on color and financial status."
As John Dittmer notes in Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, igoo-1920:
"Mulattoes as a group had economic and educational advantages dating
back to slavery, when they made up a disproportionately large percentage
of house servants and free blacks. As sons and daughters of slaveholders
they often received special training and privileges . . . Subsequent economic

A CLEAN NIGGER 127

success enabled them to educate their own children, who in turn became
doctors, teachers, and business leaders." Recipients of this good fortune dis-
played prejudice toward the rural blacks who by 1900 had begun streaming
into the city. Kathleen Adams spoke for her crowd when she snapped: "I
remember when Martin Luther King [Sr.] came to town in the back of a
wagon." (When the father of the civil rights leader arrived around 1919, he
actually drove a Model T, but by his own confession, he was a "country
bumpkin.")

Yet the hauteur of this light-skinned aristocracy notwithstanding, Ben-
jamin Davis's reasoning collapsed in the face of one inarguable fact: Nei-
ther Jim Crow nor Judge Lynch bothered making the distinctions that so
troubled him. Furthermore, men like Herndon and Proctor, while clearly
sophisticates, earnestly attempted to raise up the very Negroes whom Davis
believed they scorned, and their principal vehicle was education. As Proc-
tor liked to say: "Our church is the mother of Atlanta University."

First Congregational provided Atlanta University's endowment. To be
sure, AU and neighboring Morehouse, Clark and Spelman exposed their
students to a life beyond the ken of the Vine City children who lived within
sight of the AU clock tower. (Freshmen grappled with Cicero's De Senectute
and De Amicitia and Xenophon's Anabasis, while seniors took Du Bois's
Afro-American history class.) But the colleges' alumni and by extension
the Negro gentry did not ignore their unlettered brothers and sisters. Many
graduates of Atlanta University went into Vine City and, in classrooms that
public school superintendent William Slaton, the governor-elect's brother,
termed "a disgrace to civilization and unfit for cattle," taught youngsters to
read and write. Forty-five percent of the city's Negro teachers were AU
products, and most of the others came from Morehouse and Spelman.

It was in this way that Atlanta's black aristocracy ministered to the mul-
titude. Here was how even the unlikeliest of Vine City characters could
have acquired the tools that enabled initiates to decipher and form written
words and enter the larger world.

While it never would have occurred to Detectives Black and Scott to ask,
Jim Conley was one of these initiates. Indeed, he'd been directly touched by
the institutions John D. Rockefeller, Alonzo Herndon and Henry Hugh
Proctor built. In the late 1890s, Jim had attended Mitchell Street Elemen-
tary, Atlanta's best Negro public school. There, he'd been tutored by Alice
Carey (Spelman, 1893) and Ara Cooke (Atlanta University, 1896). Mrs.
Carey was Mitchell Street's principal, Miss Cooke a teacher, and though
they had Jim as a pupil for only two years, by the time he left, he could read
and write.

128 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Just how long Conley thought he could fool John Black and Harry Scott
with his impersonation of a mumbling, subliterate Rastus is unknown. Most
likely, he believed the detectives would never catch on. Yet on Friday,
May 16, the police began to perceive their prisoner if not for who he was,
then at least for who he wasn't.

This revised portrait of Conley might never have emerged had not two
Pinkerton operatives paid a call at the Southwest Atlanta home of Mrs.
Arthur White. Why it had taken the detectives so long to renew their interest
in Mrs. White— who'd figured previously in the investigation due to the fact
that on April 26 she'd dropped by the factory to see her husband, one of the
mechanics who'd been working on the fourth floor— is uncertain. In their
initial meeting, Leo Frank had told Harry Scott that Mrs. White had men-
tioned seeing a strange black man lurking in the lobby during her visit. At the
time, no one followed up, but upon hearing Mrs. White repeat the story ("To
the best of her recollection," the Pinkertons reported, "he was a black negro
and dressed in dark blue clothing and hat"), the agents thought of Conley.
After finishing with Mrs. White, they rushed to headquarters. There, in a con-
ference with John Black, they inquired into the status of the man who at this
juncture had been sitting uncharged in the police lockup for two weeks.

What inspired the detectives' next move has always been disputed. Sub-
sequently, Frank would claim that he was "the man who found out or paved
the way to find out that Jim Conley could write," asserting that upon learn-
ing of the authorities' interest in Conley, he sent a messenger bearing this
intelligence to the Pinkertons. Perhaps so, but in the report the agents sub-
mitted to both defense counsel and the police, they failed to mention
Frank's contribution. They wrote that following their meeting with John
Black, they had gone to the National Pencil Company and questioned E. F.
Holloway and assistant superintendents Herbert Schiff and N. V. Darley as
to Conley's ability to write. It was there, they reported, that "Mr. Holloway
stated that Conley could read and write for he had often seen the negro
with pencil and pad taking stock in the various bins." It was also there that
the operatives learned that Frank had been paying the jewelry firm of
Patrick & Thompson a dollar a week from Conley's salary, which suggested
a previously unknown intimacy between boss and employee.

Acting on the suggestion of either Schiff or Frank, who later contended
that he instructed his emissary to tell the investigators to "look into a
drawer in the [office] safe where they would find the card of a jeweler from
whom Conley bought a watch on the installment," the Pinkerton agents vis-
ited Patrick & Thompson. There, an employee gave them a contract bearing
Conley's signature. Additionally, the employee told the men they would
find similar documents at Saul & Abelson and Jones & Phillips Jewelers.

A CLEAN NIGGER I29

At this point, the agents began to realize the consequence of their discov-
ery, and after securing the other contracts, they returned to the Pinkerton
offices and made a comparison of Conley's signatures with photographic
copies of the notes found beside Mary Phagan's body. According to their
report, the results were conclusive: "The handwriting appears to be identi-
cal, all characteristics being similar."

On the strength of this finding, the Pinkerton agents descended into Vine
City to interview Lorena Jones. The men met Conley's common-law wife at
her 172 Rhodes Street home. She divulged two important clues. First she
said that Conley, contrary to his original claim, owned four shirts, a revela-
tion that gave the lie to his reason for washing the blue one. Then she
alluded to a disturbing incident that occurred a few hours after little Mary's
murder and suggested that at the time her husband was eerily animated. As
the investigators reported it:

About 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, April 26th 1913 she left James Conley sitting
in front of the fire place in her home while she went to a nearby store to get
some snuff; that when she returned to her home she did not see Conley
and she stepped to a washstand . . . and Conley jumped up from behind
the washstand and she said that she screamed and Conley said he hid from
her just to scare her.

By Saturday morning, word of the Pinkerton agents' breakthroughs had
reached nearly everyone connected with the case. But what the detectives
perceived and what Conley revealed still differed. (Indeed, this was the
weekend Conley made the statement maintaining that he'd spent April 26
innocently.) As Harry Scott reported: "We were unsuccessful in having
Conley make any damaging admissions in this case." Moreover, when the
detectives brought Mrs. Arthur White to Decatur Street to view a lineup
that included Jim and twelve other blacks, the results were inconclusive.
First she picked out "a negro wearing a green derby hat," then Conley.
Regardless of the headway the investigators made on Friday, Jim remained
elusive. On Sunday, the police decided to submit him to the specialty of the
station house, the third degree.

On what was otherwise a dull and drowsy afternoon, Harry Scott and John
Black removed Conley from his cell, placed him in a six-by-eight-foot cubi-
cle, beamed a light in his face and actually tossed the key out the open tran-
som into the hallway where the Constitution's ubiquitous Britt Craig was
stationed. From this vantage, Craig managed to hear what occurred in the

130 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

tiny room, and his account gave Atlantans the most detailed picture of how
the detectives started to drag a story from Conley:

"Well, Jim," Black began, "we've got the deadwood on you. Better
cough up and tell us something."

"Honest, white folks, I swear 'fore God and high heaven I don't know a
thing," Conley replied.

"Listen," Scott asked as he made a show of pulling a piece of paper from
his pocket, "can you write?"

"Naw, sir, I can't. I never could."

"Will you swear it?"

"I shore will."

"Do you know the penalty for perjury?"

"Naw, sir— what is it?"

"Twenty in the gang— maybe more."

"What's perjury?"

"Swearing a lie."

"But I ain't goin' to swear no lie."

"You will if you swear you can't write," Scott replied, unfolding a watch
contract bearing Jim's signature and handing it to the prisoner.

According to Craig, Conley was momentarily dumbfounded, but after
seeing that the officers indeed had the deadwood on him, he conceded:
"White folks, I'm a liar."

Following this admission, Scott and Black asked Conley to jot down
his ABCs, which he did. Then one of them ordered: "Write, 'that long tall
black negro did this by himself.' " Upon hearing the words, Jim winced,
but slowly, deliberately, he again began scribbling. When he was finished,
his inquisitors collected his work, observing that he favored some of the
same idiosyncratic spellings that graced the murder notes. With no further
ado, the detectives accused Conley of writing the messages found by little
Mary's body.

"I didn't do it," Jim swore. " 'Fore God, I didn't."

This protestation inspired Scott to mutter: "You'll be hung just as sure
as you're a foot high and black."

"But I ain't guilty," Jim again protested. "I don't know a thing about
them notes or that killing— honest, white folks."

To which Black added as if for good measure: "There ain't a jury in the
world— even a nigger jury— that'd believe you didn't kill this girl. They'd
hang you or lynch you— likely lynching."

A CLEAN NIGGER I3I

On that note, the detectives put a halt to the grilling, but instead of
returning Conley to his old quarters, they took him to a basement level iso-
lation cell described in the press as dark and desolate. There, Jim would
ponder the events of the past few hours.

How long Conley remained in solitude is unknown, but on Saturday morn-
ing, May 24— a week after being submitted to the third degree and just
hours before the grand jury indicted Leo Frank— he summoned John Black
and uttered the words that would eventually enthrall all Atlanta: "Boss, I
wrote those notes."

Within minutes, Conley found himself standing in Newport Lanford's
office. There, in the presence of Harry Scott, C. Gay February, Lanf ord and
Black, the Negro enlarged upon his startling admission. Realizing the
import of Jim's testimony, the officers soon escorted him to the Thrower
Building. Hugh Dorsey had earlier been informed that Conley could write,
but he had put little stock in the news. His reaction to this latest revelation
was apparently not much more enthusiastic. (The solicitor did tell the grand
jurors of Jim's contention, but he would later assert that the body returned
its indictment on the strength of the case as he'd presented it.) However, he
was intrigued enough that he sat in with the group from headquarters as
February— who'd figured so prominently in both the 1910 detective depart-
ment scandal and the Felder episode— took Conley 's statement:

On Friday evening before the holiday, about four minutes to one
o'clock, Mr. Frank came up the aisle on the fourth floor . . . where I was
working and asked me to come to his office . . . When I went down ... he
asked me could I write and I told him yes I could write a little bit, and he
gave me a scratch pad and . . . told me to put on there "dear mother, a long,
tall, black negro did this by himself," and he told me to write it two or three
times on there. I wrote it on a white scratch pad, single ruled. He went to
his desk and pulled out another scratch pad, a brownish looking scratch
pad, and looked at my writing and wrote on that himself ... he asked me if
I wanted a cigarette, and I told him yes . . . and he pulled out a box of ciga-
rettes . . . and in that box he had $2.50, two paper dollars and two quarters,
and I taken one of the cigarettes and handed him the box and told him he
had some money in the box, and he said that was all right I was welcome to
that for I was a good working negro around there, and then he asked
me ... if I knew the night watchman and I told him no sir, I didn't know
him, and he asked me if I ever saw him in the basement and I told him no
sir, I never did see him down there, but he could ask the fireman and

132 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

maybe he could tell him more about that than I could, and then Mr. Frank
was laughing and jollying and going on in the office, and I asked him not to
take out any money for that watch man I owed, for I didn't have any to
spare, and he told me he wouldn't, but he would see to me getting some
money a little bit later. He told me he had some wealthy people in Brook-
lyn and then he held his head up and looking out of the corner of his eyes
said "Why should I hang?" . . . When I asked him not to take out any
money for the watch, he said you ought not to buy any watch, for that big
fat wife of mine wants me to buy her an automobile but he wouldn't do it;
I never did see his wife. On Tbesday morning . . . before Mr. Frank got in
jail, he came up the aisle where I was sweeping and held his head over to
me and whispered ... be a good boy and that was all he said to me.

Here at last was an answer to the conundrum that had stumped the
police since Sergeant L. S. Dobbs discovered the murder notes on the fac-
tory's basement floor, yet it was an answer wrapped in riddles. Conse-
quently, neither Lanford nor Dorsey expressed much faith in it. To the
contrary, their initial reaction was one of incredulity, even fear, each con-
tending that Conley's rambling tale was untrue and a threat to the chain in
which they'd ensnared the guilty man. The detective chief quickly branded
Jim's disclosure "false in every detail." Meanwhile, the solicitor spent Sat-
urday afternoon quizzing Conley, initiating a catechism that would con-
tinue off and on for two days. As one investigator later declared: "Never has
a witness been put through such a severe cross-examination." But to no
avail. Jim "stoutly maintained" his story.

On Monday, after Black and Scott administered another dictation test
and Conley again spelled key phrases and words (among them "night
watchman" as "night witch") just as they were spelled in the genuine items,
the official skepticism began to diminish. "Conley wrote the notes," one
detective announced. "It doesn't take an expert to realize that beyond a
shadow of a doubt his hand penned the words on the two bits of paper."

Yet despite the growing consensus that Jim wrote the notes, officers still
doubted the rest of his story. For starters, there was the matter of timing.
Observed one reporter: "Conley's delay in making his confession until
Frank's indictment seemed likely is a link against him." Then there was the
fact that no one at Decatur Street believed that Frank would have asked
Jim "Why should I hang?" when to do so would have been to confess in
advance that he was going to commit a capital crime. This objection pointed
to the most glaring implausibility of all— Conley's claim that the notes were
composed a day before the murder. Everything about the evidence sug-
gested that the act had been spontaneous. As the Georgian remarked: "No
theory that has placed the responsibility of the crime upon Frank has held

A CLEAN NIGGER 133

that he planned it deliberately a day before it was committed. The unani-
mous theory of those who have believed Frank guilty is that he did it on the
necessity of the moment to prevent the girl from revealing the attack which
is supposed to have proceeded the killing. If Conley's story is true, it means
that the murder was premeditated." Which is why detectives, while conced-
ing that Jim wrote the notes, were convinced he was lying about the rest
of it.

The squad at headquarters was not alone in expressing such qualms. As a
whole, the press remained similarly unpersuaded. At the Journal and the
Constitution, writers essentially ignored Jim's affidavit. At the Georgian,
meanwhile, the smart money —influenced not a little by the sheet's biases—
was betting that Jim himself would be indicted for the murder. Argued the
Hearst forces: "Careful study of the negro's story has revealed absurdities
in its structure which bring the deed to Conley's door."

Disturbed by the inconsistencies in Conley's exceedingly peculiar tale and
aware that he could as easily ruin the state's case as strengthen it, the detec-
tives now chose a new tack. Over the next three days, Harry Scott persist-
ently accused Jim of murdering Mary Phagan and vowed to see him hang
for it. Meanwhile, John Black commiserated with Conley, bringing him
drinks, pies, sandwiches and consolation.

Not surprisingly, the Georgian accused the officers of manipulating Con-
ley to deliver testimony damaging to Frank: "The police questions were, of
course, all put with the idea of gaining information against Frank. The
police refused to admit that suspicion was turning or should turn to Conley,
who has told one falsehood after another since his arrest. They tried res-
olutely to construe every one of his statements as against Frank and would
not admit that the continued contradictions of the negro made his value as
a witness next to nothing." Simultaneously, however, the Journal contended
that the investigators "questioned [Jim] as if they are convinced he commit-
ted the murder."

Whatever the detectives' motives, their actions left Conley scared and
disoriented. Observed the Constitution: "Conley grew weak, lost appetite,
slept very little." On Tbesday, May 28, the Negro was removed from his cell
and again taken to Newport Lanford's office. There, he confronted two
sights calculated to heighten his distress. One was the person of E. F Hol-
loway, the man who'd spotted him washing his shirt on May 1. Holloway
was there to state that he had also seen Jim somewhere else— at the pencil
factory on April 26. But it wasn't Holloway's presence that undid the
Negro. Rather, it was a copy of that afternoon's Georgian. Boomed the
page-one banner: suspicion turned to conley; accused by factory

134 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

foreman. In the story that inspired this screamer, Holloway proclaimed
that he was "thoroughly convinced that [Conley] strangled Mary Phagan
when about half drunk." After reading the article, Jim requested a private
audience with John Black. The next day, C. Gay February notarized what
would be referred to as Conley's second affidavit:

I make this statement, my second statement, in regard to the murder of
Mary Phagan at the National Pencil Factory. In my first statement I made
the statement that I went to the pencil factory on Friday, April 25, 1913,
and went to Frank's office at four minutes to one, which is a mistake. I
made this statement in regard to Friday in order that I might not be
accused of knowing anything of this murder, for I thought that if I put
myself there on Saturday, they might accuse me of having a hand in it, and
I now make my second and last statement regarding the matter freely and
voluntarily, after thinking over the situation, and I have made up my mind
to tell the whole truth . . . without the promise of any reward or from force
or fear of punishment in any way.

I got up Saturday morning, April 26th, between 9 and half past 9. 1 was
at home, 172 Rhodes Street. There is a clock on the Atlanta University and
I looked at that clock after I put on my clothes; I went to the door and
poured some water out of the wash pan . . . Then I washed my face and I
eat some steak and some liver and bread and drank a cup of tea, and then
I sat down in a chair a little while, about ten minutes, I guess, and then I
told my wife to give me back the three dollars and I would get some paper
money to keep her from losing it, to pay her rent with, and she gave it to
me, and I told her I was going to Peters Street, and I went to Peters Street.
[Here, Conley repeated the description of his visits to the Butt-In Saloon
and other haunts.] Then I started to the Capital City Laundry and on my
way there I met Mr. Frank, at the corner of Forsyth and Nelson Streets
going to Montags, and he told me to wait a few minutes, and he asked me
where I was going, and I told him I was going to . . . see my mother, and he
didn't say nothing, only he said to wait a minute until he come back . . . and
I stood there until he come back, he was gone about 20 minutes, I guess. He
come back and told me to come to the factory, that he wanted to see me,
and I went to the factory with him, walking behind him . . . Just to the right
of the steps as you go in, he put a box for me to sit on. There was some great
big boxes back further. He told me to sit down there until I heard him
whistle. He just took his foot and pushed a box over there for me to sit on.
Then he told me not to let Mr. Darley see me. [Here, Conley provided an
account of the people— among them Mrs. White, E. F Holloway, a young
factory girl named Mattie Smith, and N. V. Darley— who came in and out
of the plant that morning.] After . . . about 15 or 20 minutes . . . there . . .

A CLEAN NIGGER 135

wasn't any passing at all, and I sat there on the box with my head against
the trash barrel. I stretched my feet out and put my hat in my lap . . . and
the next thing that attracted my attention, Mr. Frank whistled for me twice,
just like this (indicating), and when he whistled I went on up the stairs and
the double doors on the stairway were closed and I opened them and they
shut themselves, and Mr. Frank was standing at the top of the steps and he
said, "You heard me, did you?" and I said, "Yes, sir," and Mr. Frank grabbed
me by my arm and he was squeezing my arm so tight his hand was trem-
bling. He had his glasses on, and he had me just like he was walking down
the street with a lady, and like he didn't want me to look behind me at all,
and I thought it was because he had me so tight that made him tremble,
and he carried me through the first office and into his private office, and
then he come back in there, and he didn't say nothing, he grabbed up a box
of sulphur matches, and he went back in the outer office, the door was open
between his office and the outer office, and then he saw two ladies coming
and he said to me, "Gee, here comes Miss Emma Clark and Miss Corinthia
Hall" and he came back in there to me, he was walking fast and seemed to
be excited, and he said to me, "Come right in here, Jim," and he motioned
to the wardrobe and I was a little slow about it and Mr. Frank grabbed me
and gave me a shove and put me in the wardrobe and he shut the doors and
told me to stay there until after they had gone, and I just heard Miss Emma
say, "Good morning, Mr. Frank are you alone?" and Mr. Frank said
"Yes." ... I stayed in the wardrobe a pretty good while, for the whiskey I
had drank got me to sweating . . . After a while, Mr. Frank ... let me
out . . . and I said, "I got too hot in there," and he said, "Yes, I see you are
sweating." . . . Then Mr. Frank asked me to sit down in a chair . . . and he
said, "Jim, can you write?" [Here, Conley recounted how Frank, after dic-
tating the murder notes to him, gave him a box of cigarettes.] . . . Then I
asked Mr. Frank if that was all he wanted with me right now, and he said
yes . . . and I went to the beer saloon across the street and opened the cig-
arette box and it had two paper dollars in there and two silver quarters,
and I laughed and said, "Good luck has done struck me," and I bought a
ten-cent double header and then went back to Peters Street . . . and I
walks up there to the moving picture show and looked at the pictures and
they didn't seem to be any good . . . and I struck out for home, and when I
got home it was about half past two o'clock, and I took the bucket and
went to Joe Carr's at Mangum and Magnolia Street, and got fifteen cents
worth of beer in it and came back home and sent the little girl to get a
dime's worth of stove wood and a nickle's worth of pan sausage, and I eat
half the pan sausage up raw, and I give my old lady $3.50, and the other lit-
tle change I kept it, and I laid down across the bed and there is where I
stayed until about half past eight that night, and I got up and set in front of

I36 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

the fire a little while and got to swimming at the head and I didn't leave
home no more until Sunday. [Here, Conley detailed how he'd spent the
following day, asserting that he'd not learned that the girl he called
"Mary Puckett" had been murdered until he returned to work on Mon-
day.] . . . On Thursday ... I got my subpoena . . . Then I went down to
wash my shirt so I could have a clean one to wear to court ... I got a little
rust on it . . . They brought me down here and found there was no blood on
the shirt, and give me my shirt back, and that's all I know.

Conley's second affidavit, as opposed to his first, created a sensation.
Both the Journal and the Constitution splashed the Negro's tale across their
front pages. The investigators who had labored so long on the case also
endorsed the statement. Harry Scott insisted that it "had practically cleared
the mystery and was the most important bit of evidence in the hands of the
state." At headquarters, the reviews were just as glowing. "The negro Con-
ley is regarded by detectives as their most material witness," reported the
Constitution. "He is the missing link, they think, which connects the chain of
circumstantial evidence which they have gathered."

Yet for all this, dissenters still could be found. Indeed, there was a nest of
them at the National Pencil Company. Just hours after Conley's second
statement was secured, the Journal interviewed Schiff, Darley and Hol-
loway. With Schiff speaking for all three, the men proposed that the new
affidavit's principal revelation— the news that Jim was at the scene of the
crime on April 26— cast suspicion not on Frank but on the Negro:

Now the theory of the crime we entertain is simply this: Conley came in
following Miss Smith and expected to rob her as she came down with her
money. When Mr. Darley happened to come down with her, Conley gave
up his attempt but continued to wait. Later, he saw little Mary Phagan
come in and waited until she came down. Then he grabbed her and tried to
get her purse. A scuffle by the elevator ensued and the negro knocked the
girl down the elevator shaft. He quickly followed her, going down by the
trapdoor. He found her cut and bruised and unconscious. Then he tied
the cord around her neck and choked her to death. He wrote the notes
himself and then pulled the staple off the rear basement door and left the
place.

In sum, the men hypothesized that the murderer was not, as Hugh Dorsey
contended, motivated by lust but by a pathetic desire to steal the $1.20 in
wages Mary Phagan had collected the day of the crime. To buttress their
point, they asked a simple question: What happened to little Mary's purse

A CLEAN NIGGER 137

and the two half dollars and change she had received only seconds before
her death?

The misgivings cited by the pencil company employees found a sympa-
thetic ear at the Georgian. Remaining true to its pro-Frank stance, the
paper observed: "Three responsible officials of the plant have outlined
plausible theories as to how the negro could have committed the crime.
They have compiled a most laudable explanation of how he killed the Pha-
gan girl. With each cross-examination of the negro by the police in their
attempts to secure more evidence against Frank, Conley has only ensnared
himself."

John Black and Harry Scott, however, did not share such a belief.
Reported the Journal: "Little if any credence is placed by the detectives in
the theory of the officials and employees of the National Pencil Company
that Mary Phagan was killed by James Conley and that his motive was rob-
bery." While the investigators were puzzled by the disappearance of the vic-
tim's bag and pay, they were sure they'd turn up. Still, the doubts tempered
the euphoria at headquarters. Moreover, the police developed some misgiv-
ings of their own. Most vexing was the fact that nowhere in the second affi-
davit did Jim ever indicate that when he wrote the notes, he knew a crime
had been committed. By his account, Frank had simply dictated them out of
the blue. In hopes of getting to the bottom of it all, the detectives decided to
stage a confrontation between the accuser and the accused.

Around 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, May 28, a delegation consisting of
Chiefs Beavers and Lanford, Harry Scott and Jim Conley marched the few
blocks from 175 Decatur Street to the Fulton County Tower. At the door,
the men spoke to Sheriff Wheeler Mangum, who in turn conveyed their
proposal to his star prisoner, whose friend Milton Klein happened to be vis-
iting. For Frank, the invitation presented a terrible quandary. If he was
guilty, the last thing he would have wanted was to sit down with Conley in
the authorities' presence. Yet there were perfectly innocent reasons why he
would have been wary, chief among them his memories of the disastrous
jailhouse session Scott and Detective John Black had brokered between
Newt Lee and him.

Legally, as Chief Beavers had been instructed before he embarked on
this mission, Frank was not required to see anyone outside his lawyer's
presence— at the time an impossibility, as two days earlier, Luther Rosser
had taken the train to rugged Rabun County where he was representing
the Georgia Railway and Electric Company in its ongoing court fight to
open the Tallulah Gorge power plant. Yet after Frank, using Klein as a
go-between, declined to meet with Conley, the police cited the decision as
evidence of the superintendent's involvement in Mary Phagan's murder.

I38 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"Detectives who pin faith to the negro's story and believe Frank guilty,"
reported the Constitution, "speculate upon the prisoner's unwillingness to
face the sweeper. If he is not guilty, they say, he likely wouldn't object to fac-
ing the negro. They say that it is damaging to his plea of innocence to refuse
the negro an audience." Eventually, Conley himself seconded this opinion,
telling the Journal: "I wish they would let me face Mr. Frank and tell him
just what I have told the detectives. One of us would go down, and it
wouldn't be me."

While such insinuations further blackened Leo Frank's reputation, the
detectives still faced the dilemma that had inspired their attempt to bring
Conley and the superintendent together in the first place. The inconsisten-
cies permeating Jim's depositions had not gone away. Accordingly, the offi-
cers decided to sweat the Negro yet again.

The Thursday afternoon interrogation of Conley lasted four hours and
was, by all accounts, the most ruthless grilling he endured. Beginning about
2:45 in Newport Lanford's office, various officers— among them Lanford,
Beavers, Harry Scott and Pat Campbell— peppered the Negro with a dizzy-
ing barrage of questions, making him vividly aware of the treacherous
ground on which he was treading. Unlike during previous sessions, there
were few outbursts, and perhaps because reporters had been barred, a tense
calm prevailed. Attesting to the importance of the examination was the fact
that Newt Garner— Hugh Dorsey's assistant— shuttled in and out of the
room every few minutes importing lines of inquiry while exporting answers.
At times, Garner literally ran between headquarters and the solicitor's
office. The activity finally came to a halt at dusk when C. Gay February—
present now at the creation of all of Jim's affidavits— was called to notarize
yet another. An hour later, the Negro, his fingers twitching nervously, sweat
streaming off his brow, was escorted back to his cell, and a triumphant group
of lawmen emerged to meet the press. At last, declared Chief Beavers, the
Phagan murder had been solved, and shortly thereafter, the police released
what would come to be known as Conley's third affidavit:

On Saturday, April 26, 1913, when I come back to the pencil factory
with Mr. Frank I waited for him downstairs like he told me, and when he
whistled for me I went upstairs and he asked me if I wanted to make some
money right quick and I told him "Yes, sir," and he told me that he had
picked up a girl back there and had let her fall and that her head hit against
something, he didn't know what it was, and for me to move her, and I
hollered and told him the girl was dead, and he told me to pick her up and
bring her to the elevator and I told him I didn't have nothing to pick her up
with and he told me to go and look by the cotton box there and get a piece

A CLEAN NIGGER 139

of cloth, and I got a big wide piece of cloth and come back there to the
men's toilet where she was, and I tied her up, and I taken her and brought
her up there to a little dressing room, carrying her on my right shoulder,
and she got too heavy for me and she slipped off my shoulder and fell on
the floor right there at the dressing room and I hollered for Mr. Frank to
come there and help me, that she was too heavy for me, and Mr. Frank
come down there and told me to pick her up, damn fool, and he run down
there to me and he was excited, and he picked her up by the feet, her head
and feet were sticking out of the cloth and then we brought her on to the
elevator, Mr. Frank carrying her by the feet and me by the shoulders, and
we brought her to the elevator and then Mr. Frank says, "Wait, let me get
the key," and he went into the office and got the key and come back and
unlocked the elevator door and started the elevator down. Mr. Frank
turned it on himself and we went on down to the basement and Mr. Frank
helped me take it off the elevator and he told me to take it back there to
the sawdust pile, and I picked it up and put it on my shoulder again, and
Mr. Frank, he went up the ladder and watched the trap door to see if any-
body was coming, and I taken her back there and taken the cloth from
around her and taken her hat and shoe which I had picked up upstairs right
where her body was lying and brought them down and untied the cloth and
brought them back and throwed them on the trashpile in front of the fur-
nace, and Mr. Frank was standing at the trap door at the head of the ladder.
He didn't tell me where to put the things. I laid her body down with her
head towards the elevator, lying on her stomach and the left side of her
face was on the ground and the right side of her face was up, and both arms
were laying down with her body, by the side of her body. Mr. Frank joined
me back on the first floor. I stepped on the elevator and he stepped on the
elevator when it got to where he was, and he said, "Gee, that was a tire-
some job," and I told him his job was not as tiresome as mine was, because
I had to tote it all the way from where she was laying to the dressing room,
and in the basement from the elevator to where I left her. Then Mr. Frank
hops off the elevator before it gets even with the second floor and he
makes a stumble and he hits the floor and catches with both hands, and he
went on around to the sink to wash his hands, and I went and cut off the
motor, and I stood and waited for Mr. Frank to come from around there
washing his hands, and then we went on into the office, and Mr. Frank he
couldn't hardly keep still, he was all the time moving about from one office
to the other, then he come back into the stenographer's office and come
back and he told me, "Here comes Emma Clark and Corinthia Hall."
[Here, Conley recounted his soujourn in the wardrobe.] Then . . . Mr.
Frank . . . asked me to write a few lines on that paper, a white scratch pad

140 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

he had there, and he told me what to put on there, and I asked him what he
was going to do with it and he told me to just go ahead and write, and then
after I got through writing Mr. Frank looked at it and said it was all right
and Mr. Frank looked up at the top of the house and said, "Why should I
hang, I have wealthy people in Brooklyn," and I asked him what about me,
and he told me that was all right about me, for me to keep my mouth shut
and he would make everything all right, and then I asked him where was
the money he said he was going to give me and Mr. Frank said, "Here is two
hundred dollars," and he handed me a big roll of greenback money and I
didn't count it; I stood there a little while looking at it in my hand, and I
told Mr. Frank not to take another dollar for that watch man I owed and he
said he wouldn't— and the rest is just like I told it before. The reason I have
not told this before is I thought Mr. Frank would get out and help me out,
but it seems that he is not going to get out and I have decided to tell the
whole truth about this matter.

With that, the statement ended, although scrawled on its last page was a
handwritten addendum penned after the text was typed to explain what
happened to the heretofore never mentioned $200:

While I was looking at the money in my hands, Mr. Frank said: "Let me
have that and I will make it all right with you Monday if I live and nothing
happens," and he took the money back and I asked him if that was the way
he done and he said he would give it back Monday.

If the reaction to Conley's first affidavit was disbelief and the reaction
to his second was grudging acceptance, the response to his third was
unchecked enthusiasm. Friday morning, Atlantans awakened to a double-
deck banner atop the Constitution:

CONLEY SAYS HE HELPED FRANK CARRY BODY
OF MARY PHAGAN TO PENCIL FACTORY CELLAR

With this one revelation, dozens of clues gathered during the month since
little Mary's death— fragments that had heretofore refused to coalesce—
suddenly adhered to the powerful pull of the Negro's story. Finally, the hair
on the second-story factory lathe, the blood on the floor and the murder
notes fit together. "The negro's affidavit," reported the Journal, "is regarded
by the detectives as the most important link in their chain of evidence
against the factory official." Echoed the Georgian: "Chief Lanford and
Scott announced Thursday that they considered the negro's final affidavit

A CLEAN NIGGER 141

proof conclusive of the suspected superintendent's guilt and were thereby
ready to place the case on trial." At last, the city was persuaded that Conley
had told all, and the odd thing was, it was his initial dissembling that gave
his ultimate assertions the sharp glint of credibility. As whites saw it,
Negroes were by nature mendacious. Falsehoods and fabrications clung to
them like dirt to a boy. Only by submitting them to the rough scrubbing of
interrogation could the guises and guiles that were their protective col-
oration be washed away. As Jim himself, when asked what had convinced
him to open up, would tell writers: "Finally, the thing got to workin' in my
head so much that I just couldn't hold it any longer. I couldn't sleep and it
worried me mightily. I just decided it was time for me to come out with it
and I did. I . . . told the truth, and I feel like a clean nigger." The next day,
the police would trot out their gleaming black beauty for a triumphant spin
around the block.

Shortly after noon on Friday, May 30, Chief Beavers's limousine eased to a
halt in front of the National Pencil Company. The sight of the vehicle, its
curtains drawn, sent a buzz through the employees milling about on their
lunch break. The buzz intensified when the car's occupants— Beavers, New-
port Lanford and a handcuffed Conley —emerged onto the sidewalk, where
they were soon joined by Detective Campbell, Harry Scott, Herbert Schiff,
E. F Holloway and a trailing phalanx of reporters. Once the group entered
the factory, the police ordered lingering workers to leave, then barred the
door. Though all of Atlanta would learn about it in the newspapers, only a
select few would be physically present for Conley's apotheosis.

After Jim was uncuffed, he walked partway up the stairs leading to the
office floor.

"Where did you first see Frank when he whistled to you twice?" some-
one asked.

"Right here," Conley replied, pointing to the top of the steps. "He asked
me if I wanted to make some money right quick and I told him I did. Then
he said he had picked up a girl back there who had hit her head against
something and he wanted me to bring her body to the elevator."

With all eyes now on him, Conley led his auditors to the rear of the metal
department. There, he pointed out a spot near a men's toilet where he main-
tained he'd discovered Mary Phagan's body lying doubled up, adding— in
his first reference to the cause of death— that the cord apparently used to
strangle the girl had been knotted around her neck, extending at right
angles on both sides.

"When I got back here, I got scared and hollered to Mr. Frank and said

142 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

that the girl was dead," Jim explained. "He was standing in that doorway
right there. He told me to get a sack and put her body in that." As if on cue,
Conley began to play out the scene, walking to a box in the middle of the
room and extracting a piece of bagging, which he held up for all to see, com-
menting: "This is jus' like I got that day except that this has got a little more
cotton in it and the other one was slit."

The task of bundling the body in the bagging was hard, Jim recalled, but
loading it onto the elevator was harder still. "He [Frank] picked up her feet,
and I carried her shoulders. Just when we got by the window Frank was so
nervous that he dropped the girl and her feet dragged on the floor."

Conley ushered the group to the lift, speaking along the way of how he'd
waited with the grim cargo while Frank ran to his office to fetch the key that
unlocked the fuse box. Upon the superintendent's return, Jim said, they'd
promptly done what he and the party did now— descend to the basement.
There, Conley resumed his narrative.

"I took her body out of the elevator. Mr. Frank helped me. He told me to
take the body up to the trash pile in front of the furnace. I put the girl on my
shoulders again and walked up there with her and dropped her right there."
Jim indicated the spot a few feet to the left of the furnace where Newt Lee
had found "the package." Then he rushed on: "I pulled the bagging out from
under her and threw it there on the pile of trash in front of the furnace. Mr.
Frank, he waited there at the trapdoor to see if anyone was coming. Before
that I went back upstairs and got her hat and shoes and brought them down
in the basement."

At this point, Chief Beavers interjected: "Show us the way you left the
girl's body." Once again acting out the part, Jim dropped to the cinder-
covered ground. Lying on his left side, he pressed his face into the dirt,
crooked his right arm under him and splayed his left inertly behind him. His
feet pointed to the rear of the building.

Seeing Jim sprawled out that way, Harry Scott whispered to the re-
porters: "You can't help but believe him." No one disagreed.

And there was more. After dusting himself off, Conley directed the
group's attention to the trapdoor at the front of the factory. "Frank climbed
up this ladder," he said, "and I ran the elevator back up. He met me on the
first floor and got in the elevator with me and rode with me up to the second
floor."

That stated, Jim once again began to perform. Just as he said he'd done
on April 26, he switched on the lift, paused in the lobby, then continued to
the office floor. Stopping the car six inches below the lip, he surprised the
men who'd ridden up with him by tripping and falling to his knees as he
stepped out— just as he said Leo Frank had done.

After walking to a sink and washing off —again, just as he said Frank had

A CLEAN NIGGER 143

done— Conley led his audience into the superintendent's office, took a seat
behind the desk and, sticking to the story he'd advanced in his final affi-
davit, started to soliloquize: "Mr. Frank sat down in his swivel chair and
turned and twisted for a moment, turning first white and then red and sort
of gasping as he talked. We heard footsteps outside, and Mr. Frank hurried
me into this wardrobe."

Here, Jim paused long enough to hop in and out of the piece of furniture
before plowing ahead: "He told me to come out of the wardrobe. For a
minute or two he clasped his hands and swayed about in his chair as if he
was sick. Then he turned to me and told me to write on a pencil pad which
was lying on the desk beside me. He dictated and I wrote: 'That long, tall
black negro did this by himself.' "

His hands a flurry of activity, Jim indicated the surface upon which he
said he had penned the murder notes, an inkstand he said Frank had used as
a paperweight to hold down the first one and the drawer from which he said
the superintendent had removed a new, different-colored pad.

"He handed me this pad and then told me to write another note," he
said. "He dictated this note also and as far as I can [remember] it went like
this." Whereupon Conley began to write, producing a rough facsimile of
the second missive:

Dear mother a long tall black negro did this boy himslef he told me if I
wood lay down he wood love me play like the night witch did this boy
himslef.

After recounting once again how Frank had allegedly asked, "Why
should I hang when I have got rich folks in Brooklyn?," Jim concluded his
monologue by racing through the story regarding the $2.50 he'd found in
the cigarette box and the $200 his boss had proffered only to retract.

Sensing that the show had ended, Newport Lanford asked Jim a last
question, one designed to undercut any charges that he had been coerced:
"Have you been abused or threatened by the officers into making this con-
fession?"

"No sir," Conley replied. "The officers have treated me kindly ... I am
telling this because I want to tell it."

Not that the reporters needed any such reassurances. To a man, they
rushed back to their newsrooms and banged out accounts of the production
they had witnessed that accorded it an unassailable legitimacy. Roared the
Journal's double-deck banner:

CONLEY TAKEN TO FACTORY, SHOWS WHERE GIRL WAS FOUND —
HOW THEY PUT BODY IN BASEMENT

144 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Meanwhile, the Georgian, though subtly suggesting that Conley might have
been parroting a story concocted by the police, also applauded:

Conley appeared perfectly composed ... his earnest and apparently truth-
ful bearing gave his dramatic story, told in a matter of fact way, a convinc-
ing power that evidently had its effect on every one who was listening to
his recital . . . [He] did not hesitate for a moment during the entire time he
was showing his part in the crime, and his frankness of speech and clock-
like work impressed the officers that he was at last telling the exact truth.

With Chief Beavers declaring there was no need for further questioning
and Hugh Dorsey announcing that the state would hold Jim as a material
witness, the drama was over. Accordingly, Conley was remanded to the
Tower. There he was expected to remain until it came time for him to testify.

EIGHT

A Tramp Alumnus

n;

p ot since Uncle Remus had a black man's story so enthralled
Atlanta. On street corners throughout the city, newsboys hawking
Friday's afternoon editions cried, conley lays bare phagan
crime, and outside the Tower, congregations of the curious gathered just to
be near the remarkable Negro. At some point early in the evening, an
unlikely couple wended their way through these onlookers. Lorena Jones,
Jim Conley's common-law wife, was bringing a young white lawyer named
William Smith to meet her husband.

On the surface, there was nothing peculiar about the visit. Despite the
fact that Conley's account of little Mary's murder had won widespread
acceptance, he still needed legal counsel. The violent slaying of a virginal
Georgia girl was not the sort of outrage a shiftless black man generally suc-
ceeded in attributing to a college-educated white man in a Southern court-
room.

Yet the true sponsors of this get-together were not especially concerned
with Conley's fate. Several days earlier, an Atlanta Georgian editor had
approached William Smith and offered to pay his fee if he could secure the
state's star witness as a client. Despite the potential for divided loyalties,
such third-party arrangements were not at the time unusual, and the lawyer
had agreed to the proposal. Shortly thereafter, he and Lorena, who was also
in cahoots with the Hearst forces (Conley's wife had served as one of the
newspaper's emissaries to Smith), were standing in Jim's cell.

The pair found Conley in good spirits. Indeed, he was downright giddy
with relief. In the hours since concluding his tour of the factory, he had been
holding forth to an endless stream of gawkers and reporters, dazzling them
with fact and philosophy. Rather bitterly, he'd described his alleged partner-
in-crime's stinginess: "Mr. Frank, he ain't paid me nuthin' yet, like he prom-
ised to do, and the only thing I got out of it was that two dollars he gave me
in the cigarette box." But then, lest he sound motivated by anything other
than noble purposes, he'd added: "I done told the truth 'fore God and high
Heaven. If He was to tell me this very minute that He was going to hit me
with a streak of lightning if I didn't tell the straight of it, I couldn't say a

I46 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

thing on earth 'cept what's in that affidavit." The larger Jim's audience, the
more garrulous he seemed to grow.

While William Smith was as captivated by Conley's declarations as the
next man, his overwhelming reaction was one of alarm. From his perspec-
tive, the Negro's indiscriminate jawings not only jeopardized whatever
schemes were afoot in the Georgian newsroom; worse, they opened him up
to people who cared even less about his well-being than Hearst's vultures.
As far as the lawyer could determine, the crowd auditing Jim's remarks
included jailhouse sharpies willing to twist his words for a quick profit, and
friends of Leo Frank hoping to entrap him into making incriminating state-
ments.

Little wonder, then, that Smith, "after receiving from Conley ratification
of my employment," spent the rest of this initial session urging his new
client to keep his mouth shut. "Practically my entire communication at that
time," the lawyer would subsequently recollect, "was relative to a policy of
silence I advised he should adopt."

Conley, however, was in no mood to take such suggestions to heart. The
very next morning, he conducted what amounted to a jailhouse levee for
the Journal's Harold Ross and Harllee Branch, offering up another round
of beguiling clues and reflections— this time from a cozy perch on his bunk.
"The girl must have been dead for about 15 minutes when I saw her for
when I lifted her body to push the crocus bagging under it I took hold of her
forearm and it was cold," he told the reporters. "Her hat, one slipper, a piece
of ribbon and her parasol lay several feet away. I never did see any purse."
Then, striking a comfortably resigned note, Conley added: "When the judge
calls me up before him I am going to ask him not to ask me any questions,
but to simply sentence me. If it's to hang, I'll stick to my story, and if it's life
imprisonment, there'll be no change." Mesmerized by his sudden notoriety,
Jim quite simply could not stop talking.

On Saturday afternoon, William Smith, Hugh Dorsey and Newport Lan-
ford met in the solicitor's office to discuss what had become a mutual prob-
lem. Like Conley's lawyer, the authorities were disturbed by Jim's volubility,
but for a different reason. To them, his pronouncements posed a threat
to the case against Leo Frank. Considering the number of times the Negro
had already contradicted himself, there was ample possibility that he might
offer up an entirely new tale. And even if he didn't change tunes, he was
almost certain to reveal information the prosecution hoped to save for the
trial.

After several hours of deliberation, the men emerged with a solution to
their dilemma. Conley would be transferred from his laxly guarded quar-
ters in the Tower back to the constantly monitored headquarters lockup.

A TRAMP ALUMNUS 147

There, access would be restricted, in Smith's words, "to only such officials as
were approved by me." Dorsey, who was familiar with the Georgian's stake
in all this, felt comfortable with the arrangement. Smith was a friend, and a
friend who happened to represent both the prosecution's principal witness
and the Hearst newspaper deserved consideration.

Despite its patent irregularity— the county jail, after all, was the legal
and proper lodging place for state prisoners— the decision to remove Con-
ley to the station house elicited few protests. In part, the lack of response
was due to ignorance in the newsrooms of the Journal and Constitution as
to the Georgian's role in the matter. Then there was the not inconsequential
reality that on the day the transfer was made, Luther Rosser was still out of
town representing the Georgia Railway and Electric Company in its fight
to open the Tallulah Gorge generating project.

During the next week, however, one man began to despair over the part
he had played in these machinations— William Smith. Conley's lawyer did
not regret the fact that he had helped place Jim out of harm's way. As he'd
subsequently tell the press: "I did this in a sincere effort to protect Conley
from the perjury of his fellows and in an effort to have him given a square
deal." Rather, he rued forming the alliance that brought him into the affair
in the first place, belatedly realizing that the Georgian's emerging pro-
Frank stance could only mean that its editors wished Conley no good. In
unpublished autobiographical notes written years later, the lawyer, while
not elucidating all the dynamics, would acknowledge that he'd misjudged
Hearst's intentions: "In a very short time, I became convinced that the
major interest of the newspaper was to obtain all possible information
about the murder or any facts in relation thereto. I became equally con-
vinced that premature publicity of any possible defensive matter might be
injurious to Conley's interests."

Why Smith ever allowed himself to swallow the notion that the Geor-
gian's purposes could have been otherwise was a subject he never suffi-
ciently addressed, but ambition played its part. Like nearly every lawyer in
Atlanta, he wanted to insinuate himself into the Phagan case, and the news-
paper granted him entree. Yet it really wasn't that simple, for Smith was not
by nature an opportunist. He was, in fact, an idealist of the sort who had dif-
ficulty attributing to others motives less high-minded than his own.

William Smith had been guilty of both self-interest and self-deception,
but once he confronted his mistakes, he quickly extricated himself from the
moral quicksand. Sometime during the first week of June, he appeared in
the Georgian's Alabama Street newsroom. There, in a meeting with the
paper's editors, he stated that it would be impossible for him to furnish
them with any information about Conley's defense. The financial ramifica-

I48 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

tions of this sudden about-face were apparently significant. "I sacrificed the
compensation I was to receive from interests worth millions," the lawyer
subsequently told a reporter. Yet he did not regret the decision, for it freed
him to pursue a higher calling.

Almost from the instant he met Jim Conley, Smith had felt duty-bound
to stand by the "penniless and friendless" black man. For one thing, Leo
Frank had already made the grounds of the impending legal battle clear.
"No white man killed Mary Phagan," the factory superintendent had
reportedly told a prison attache upon hearing of Conley's affidavits. "It's a
negro crime, through and through." The Negro to whom Frank was refer-
ring was, of course, poor Jim, and as Smith later phrased it, the accused was
going to use every bit of his "great influence and unlimited financial means"
to bring the point home to a jury.

Yet Smith's resolve was galvanized by more than outrage at Frank's
wherewithal. The simple but profound fact of the matter was that he
believed Conley was telling the truth. As the lawyer would subsequently
write, he "shared the view of the prosecuting attorney, which was that Mr.
Frank was guilty of the crime as the sole principal."

Accordingly, Smith aligned himself with Hugh Dorsey. Later, he would
remember: "My justification for this course was based upon my own belief
that in aiding the State to secure [Frank's] conviction, I was directly serving
the interests of Conley, my own client." William Smith had decided that
the surest way of saving Jim Conley's neck was to assist in breaking Leo
Frank's.

Few Atlanta lawyers were better suited to the task at hand than 33-year-old
William Manning Smith. During his eleven years as a member of the city's
bar, he had developed a reputation as a fierce defender who frequently
represented underdogs. Initially, circumstances had forced him into this
role. "I had a very difficult time in the early part of my career," he sub-
sequently wrote. Smith had scraped for the legal profession's crumbs—
court-appointed assignments representing the destitute, which in Georgia's
capital usually meant Negroes. Over time, he had prospered, and his clien-
tele's pigmentation had lightened. By 1913, most of his clients were white.
Nevertheless, the fact remained that to many, Smith— though he would
have abjured the phrase— was a "nigger lawyer."

In Atlanta's legal hierarchy, nigger lawyers ranked above contempt but
beneath respect. Tliey had more in common with the geegaw peddlers and
insurance salesmen who trod darktown's dusty paths than with the advo-
cates who jousted in the high halls of justice. Not that they didn't fulfill a

A TRAMP ALUMNUS 149

necessary function. With fewer than ten black lawyers practicing in the state
of Georgia, these white attorneys handled nearly all legal transactions
among Negroes and most legal business between the races. Yet there was
little prestige in the work. How could there have been when much of it was
performed in such noisy infernos as Recorder's Court?

Through the years, Smith had spent a good deal of time in Judge Nash
Broyles's courtroom. There, he had defended a plethora of Negro ne'er-do-
wells whose backgrounds were similar to Jim Conley's. Yet his involvement
with Atlanta's blacks did not stop in the lower realms of legal purgatory,
was not confined to those arenas where the best one could achieve for
a client was a reduced sentence in the stockade. While Smith frequently
represented Negroes, what distinguished him from the others— and what
would redound so favorably to Jim Conley— was that he was dedicated to
the race on some deeper level and was willing to champion its members in
the state's higher courts, in the legislature, and even on the stump.

In 191 1, representing an elderly Negro woman known in court docu-
ments only as Rich, Smith took an almost unimaginable step— he sued the
Georgia Railway and Electric Company for damages to cover injuries his
client received during a streetcar scuffle between a white conductor and
a young black man who refused to pay his fare. At the trial, several wit-
nesses testified that the Rich woman was severely bruised when the con-
ductor beat and then pushed the unruly passenger down on top of her.
Though the rail line's counsel disputed these accounts, a jury found that the
conductor had failed to "exercise that extreme care and caution which a
prudent man would exercise" and awarded the plaintiff a small financial
compensation.

Out of penuriousness or, more likely, in an effort to keep the thousands
of black Atlantans who regularly rode the trolley cars— since the 1906 race
riot, a locus of increasing tension— in their place, Georgia Railway and
Electric refused to settle, appealing the verdict to the state's Supreme
Court. On June 29, 191 1, that body issued an extraordinary decision:

We are not unaware of the trying situation in which street-car conduc-
tors in many of our Southern cities are often placed by the insolent and
designedly offensive conduct of that lower element of the negro race
which makes it a point to take advantage of their position as passengers
to use to street-car employees, while on duty, wanton and insulting lan-
guage which they would not dare to use under other circumstances . . . We
know . . . that a bad negro is just about the meanest and most vicious ani-
mal ever created . . . but as judges, we must lay down rules of law which are
applicable to all races alike, and it will not do to say . . . that a railway con-

150 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

ductor can be allowed to imperil the safety of his passengers by his acts of
violence, provoked, even though most naturally . . . The evidence fully
authorized the verdict.

Georgia Railway and Electric Co. v. Rich was not the first case in which
William Smith had put himself on the line for a Negro. In 1910, he was
appointed by the court to represent a black man named Roger Merritt who
had been convicted and sentenced to death for raping a white woman. A
worse predicament was almost inconceivable, as the victim had identified
the defendant as her assailant. Yet the presiding judge believed the victim
was lying and had ordered the case retried, instructing Smith to "handle the
matter with great care" or "it would mean death for Merritt," which "he did
not deserve." In the ensuing trial— where the white woman again pointed
out the black man as her assailant— Smith prevailed. As he later put it, he
convinced "the jury that there was a reasonable doubt of Roger Merritt's
guilt."

For Smith, however, Merritt's acquittal was only half the battle. Though
his client was free, the lawyer had requested the court to return the Negro
to the county jail as a place of refuge against the inevitable lynch mob. Then,
Smith had sought advice from an old and considering the times unlikely
associate: the Reverend Henry Hugh Proctor, the pastor of Atlanta's First
Congregational Church and spiritual leader of the city's black elite.

In all likelihood Smith and Proctor met during the 1906 race riot, where
each participated in peacekeeping efforts. (The lawyer, a captain with the
state militia, saw duty when the guard was summoned to restore order,
while the minister joined a biracial committee to mediate grievances.) By
1908, the two were working together to defeat a bill before the Georgia leg-
islature that would have decreased the already negligible sum the state
allotted its Negro schools. And by the early teens— when Proctor appointed
Smith to the previously all-black standing committee that served as his con-
gregation's advisory board— they were friends.

In the matter of Roger Merritt, these improbable allies decided to pur-
sue the only course that offered their recently exonerated charge a fighting
chance against Judge Lynch. After raising the necessary funds, Proctor left
the plan's implementation to Smith. Working in the dead of night, the
lawyer, accompanied by the Fulton County sheriff and several deputies,
escorted Merritt to Terminal Station, arranged rail passage to an out-of-
state city where the black man could establish a new life, then stood guard
until the train pulled away.

William Smith's commitment to Georgia's Negroes arose from more
than a simple willingness— acquired early on when he was struggling— to
take cases others refused. He believed that the Southern white man owed

A TRAMP ALUMNUS 151

his black brethren a great debt. Smith was, in fact, a zealot on the sub-
ject, proselytizing not only to the saved but to the unreconstructed, as
the keynote address he delivered at the 1912 Confederate Memorial Day
observances in Augusta, Georgia, illustrates.

Speaking from a podium overlooking Augusta's Magnolia Cemetery—
the final resting place of thousands of men who had perished defending
slavery— the lawyer who in just a few short months would be preparing Jim
Conley to testify against Leo Frank had the temerity to suggest that his gen-
eration's "chief duty to our honored dead" was to elevate the Negro. With
that, Smith had proclaimed:

Out of this war grew the most serious problem that any defeated people
[have ever been] called upon to face. In my judgement, the ten million
negroes made through Lincoln's proclamation free, independent, Ameri-
can citizens are here to stay. The rightful solution to this problem staggers
the wisdom of our civic students. That it must be solved, no right thinking
Southerner would question. These ten million negroes forcibly exiled from
their native homes ignorant and practically helpless are now, under provi-
dence, wards of the Southland. That we could deal with them other than
honorably is not to be considered. I have faith in the broadminded, sane,
and conservative spirit of our people in the handling of this problem and
believe that [it] will be solved by Southern white men with as heroic a
devotion to principle as that of their fathers who fought in the cause from
which the present negro problem had its birth.

Though Smith stopped short of defining his solution to the racial
dilemma, he was undoubtedly endorsing a position that was far ahead of its
time and place.

Smith's obsession with the black man's dilemma was no passing fancy.
As early as 1898, when he was a mere college sophomore, he'd discoursed
on the issue at Atlanta's Intercollegiate Oratorical Contest, for years one
of the signal events in the lives of Georgia's stripling statesmen. Attended
by thousands of vocal partisans and accorded reams of newspaper coverage,
the annual competition drew entrants from the state's principal colleges—
the University of Georgia; Georgia Tech; Mercer University in Macon; and
North Georgia College, a military school nestled in the mountain town of
Dahlonega.To the victor went the John Temple Graves medal— a gold coin
engraved with the state seal and named for the Georgian's founder, the
contest's patron— and a tacit invitation to enter politics.

Considering the stakes, it's hardly surprising that the debaters usually
elucidated some position upon which everyone in the state already agreed.
Nevertheless, William Smith— clad in the dress grays of his alma mater,

152 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

North Georgia— stepped onto the stage of the ornate DeGive's Opera
House, took in the vast throng of lusty-lunged fraternity lads, pretty girls
wearing the school colors of their favorites and sundry political horseflesh
appraisers and began to address "The Negro Problem."

The text of young Smith's declamation is long lost. (In later years, the
lawyer summarized the speech as a "plea to the college men and women of
Georgia for a fair and just deal for the 'Brother in Black.' ") Also lost is any
account of how the address compared to that given by the eventual winner,
a Mercer student who confined his thoughts to "The South's Contribution
to the American Republic." There is, however, a surviving review. It comes
from the office of future Howard University president Wilbur P. Thurkield,
at the time chancellor of Atlanta's Gammon Theological Seminary, an insti-
tution for the training of Negro ministers. Wrote the educator: Smith's dis-
course "was not tarnished by those vilifying flings which orators both young
and old are wont to make."

At the turn of the century, rare was the Southern Cicero who could resist
racism's crowd-pleasing appeal. Over in South Carolina, Senator "Pitch-
fork" Ben Tillman got 'em going by vowing that Negroes were "akin to the
monkey." Meanwhile, in Mississippi, Senator James Vardaman played to the
house by asserting: "Educate the negro, and you spoil a good field hand and
make an insolent cook." It was no different in Georgia. Yet William Smith,
even at the impressionable age of eighteen, even on an occasion crucial to
his dreams, refused to join the chorus. Worse, he purposely sang off-key
("Brother in black?" "A fair and just deal?"). By the time, fifteen years
later, when he took on Jim Conley as his client, Smith had grown even more
impassioned regarding the Negro cause. This, despite the fact that in every
other discernible way, he was as typical a Southerner as ever mixed grits
with gravy.

To anyone who'd met William Smith on the streets of Atlanta in 1913,
sounded him out on his work, political connections and career aspirations,
then visited with him, his wife and his children, the conclusion would have
quickly dawned that here was the Southern beau ideal in midcareer.

For openers, Smith comported himself as an officer and a gentleman, and
even when clad in a business suit, he exuded a martial air. He strode
through life chest out, stomach in, hat cocked over his brow. Though slen-
der and of only medium height, he seemed imposing beyond his size.
Possessed of bright blue eyes and a cannonading voice, he commanded
attention. Yet for all that, one could not say that Smith was a bellicose sort,
for in the best Sir Walter Scott style, he tempered his pugnacity with gal-

A TRAMP ALUMNUS 153

lantry, graciousness and grandiloquence. The man could ladle on the lan-
guage, perfuming conversations with bits of Tennyson, inquiring after your
daddy, praising anything Dixiefied from cotton bolls to watermelons.

Then there was the fact that while Smith may well have started out at the
bottom of the legal profession, he'd eventually become a partner in the firm
of Chambers, Daley and Smith, where he was expected to do much more
than defend Negroes pro bono publico. The idealistic lawyer spent much of
his time litigating prosaic criminal and civil cases. In 1907, he'd lost a nasty
battle to remove the executor of a contested will. Also in 1907, he'd pre-
vailed in a fight over a $75 real estate commission. In 1909, he'd success-
fully petitioned Georgia's Supreme Court to overturn a decision that had
allowed a sheriff to seize a team of mules from an indebted party, auction
the animals, then use the proceeds to pay the claimant. And in 191 0—
proving that, like most lawyers, he wasn't above exploiting a technicality in
defense of a client— he'd managed to get complaints against a check forger
thrown out of court by arguing that the defendant had been indicted under
the general, as opposed to the specific, statute covering the offense.

Chambers, Daley and Smith was concerned with more than just liti-
gation. The senior partner— mustachioed, orotund Aldine Chambers, an
Atlanta city councilman— was building a machine designed to elevate
himself to the city's mayoralty, and he spent most of his energies backing
candidates who might one day help him. Meanwhile, Walter Daley would
eventually be elected president of the Atlanta school board. A readiness to
work the hustings was a job requirement at the firm, which suited the junior
partner just fine.

William Smith aspired to office himself, in particular the one that until
1910 had been occupied by Charles Hill. Like many other Atlantans, Smith
had revered the late solicitor general, and he had sought to emulate him. As
he would later write:

It was then my ambition to eventually become the Solicitor General or
prosecuting attorney. This position was then filled and had been filled for
many years, by Mr. Charles D. Hill. Solicitor General Hill was a remark-
able advocate, an intensely human man, having all the virtues of a great
soul and yet not free from many of the foibles of life. Mr. Hill knew, from
his own experience, the weaknesses of man and woman. He was a great
prosecutor, not only because he was a great lawyer, but because he was a
great soul. I hoped that when Mr. Hill yielded the Solicitor Generalship,
that I might fall heir to it and that I might have the privilege of trying to be
as great a prosecutor as Mr. Hill had been, not only in his deeds, but in his
broad and kindly dealing with his fellow men who were in trouble.

154 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Whatever Aldine Chambers made of Smith's desires and the lofty senti-
ments that animated them, he did not discourage the young lawyer. To a
foxy old pol like Chambers, a well-intentioned, golden-tongued scrapper
was exactly the sort one wanted on the stump promoting one's own affairs
and those of one's cronies.

By 1913, Smith had played key roles in two of the era's fiercest cam-
paigns. The first was Atlanta's 1908 mayoral race. Initially, this contest
had promised little out of the ordinary. In the fall Democratic primary, the
right bibulous Jimmy Woodward had once again captured a majority. But
between the casting of the Democrats' votes and the usually pro forma
general election, Woodward had gone on another bender. The morning
after, he had admitted his transgression (although he claimed he'd imbibed
for medicinal purposes only) and begged forgiveness. The electorate, how-
ever, would not be kind. At a meeting of 25 leading Atlantans, the million-
aire banker Robert F. Maddox was drafted to run against Woodward.
Which was where Smith came marching in.

William Smith's military bearing was no affectation. Not only was he a
graduate of North Georgia (where he'd been cadet major) and an officer in
the state militia, but he was also president of a battalion of civic-minded,
Sousaesque sorts who'd dubbed themselves the Young Men's Marching
Club. As the name suggests, these gumptious gents liked to march, usually
on such occasions as Independence Day, but in the aftermath of Wood-
ward's spree, Smith vowed that he and his troops were going to march
Maddox into city hall.

On the evening of November 28, 1908— four days before the general
election— William Smith's torchlight parade in support of Maddox snaked
its way through the streets of downtown Atlanta. Estimates as to the num-
ber of participants varied (the young lawyer ordered 10,000 torches for the
occasion), but whatever the total, the procession was so long it took twenty
minutes to pass any given point on the route. The Journal called it "one of
the biggest public demonstrations, political or otherwise" in many years,
adding descriptively:

From an eminence the procession looked like a long river of molten
metal flowing through the streets. Incidental to its main purpose— that of
enthusiastic endorsement of Mr. Maddox for mayor— the procession was
one of the prettiest night displays that the city has ever seen.

At the head of that molten river was Smith, and on December 2, when
Maddox defeated Woodward by 4,000 votes, the up-and-coming lawyer
received considerable credit.

A TRAMP ALUMNUS 155

An auspicious political baptism— and one that boded well for Aldine
Chambers, who was reelected to the city council in the Maddox landslide.
In 19 10, however, Smith had plunged into deeper waters: the Georgia
gubernatorial race pitting Journal founder Hoke Smith against incumbent
Joseph Brown. The enmity between Smith and Brown was long-standing.
(In 1908, Brown had defeated the then incumbent Smith in a campaign
fought on the slogan "Hoke and Hunger, Brown and Bread.") And what
gave their ill will an added toxicity was that surrogates broadcast it across
Georgia. Joe Brown was many things, but one thing he was not was a
speaker. Hence he dispatched an army of articulate seconds to stand up for
him throughout the state. Though Hoke Smith thrived before audiences, he
could not be everywhere at once and employed a competing speakers'
bureau, one of whose number in 1 910 was an Atlanta lawyer who happened
to share the same surname.

Young William was no relation to old Hoke, but he stumped up and
down Georgia for his man. And out there in the little crossroads towns at
the forums and barbecues where the war was waged, he often found himself
in verbal battle with one of Joe Brown's soldiers who, like himself, was an
ambitious Atlanta lawyer: Hugh Dorsey.

The campaign-trail sparrings between Smith and Dorsey hardly rivaled
the Lincoln-Douglas debates; nevertheless, they would change both mens'
lives. Most immediately, they made Dorsey's career and scuttled Smith's
dreams, for as it so happened, Joe Brown whipped Hoke Smith by some
60,000 votes, and a few months later, when Charles Hill died, a grateful
Brown rewarded his surrogate by appointing him solicitor general of Ful-
ton County. (Whether Smith ever possessed a chance of attaining this office
is, considering his impolitic views on race, doubtful, although in 1909, he'd
assisted Hill in the successful prosecution of a particularly loathsome mur-
derer and had been written up in the newspapers as a qualified candidate.)
Smith and Dorsey's 19 10 clashes also produced a less predictable result—
the combatants formed a backstage friendship that would influence the
course of events three years later.

Away from the campaign trail, Smith was an avid joiner who knew most of
the secret handshakes and attended many of the rituals of Atlanta's frater-
nal organizations. Worshipful master of the city's Masonic Lodge #96,
chancellor commander of the Knights of Pythias and royal vizier of the
Knights of Khorassan, the young lawyer was forming associations with men
from every walk of life.

Then there was Smith's relationship with his wife and children. The

I56 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

lawyer had met Mary Lou Baker in 1903 on a double date arranged by a
mutual friend, an outing that had actually paired Mary Lou with the friend
and Smith with the friend's sister. By evening's end, it was obvious where
true affections resided. Within days Smith was pursuing Mary Lou, within
weeks they were engaged. The couple wed on December 20, 1905, in the
palm-frond-strewn sanctuary of Atlanta's Park Avenue Methodist Church,
and soon thereafter boarded a train headed north. Richmond, Washington,
New York— it was a whirlwind honeymoon, but one moment stood out. At
the Statue of Liberty, Smith insisted upon kissing his bride on every last
landing of the seemingly endless metal stairway spiraling to the top of the
monument.

Like most Southern men, Smith idealized women. In a flight of college-
days poetry, he'd rhapsodized about "beautiful Southern queens, dreams of
loveliness more graceful than any storied nymph." Yet Atlanta-reared Mary
Lou Baker was no typical belle. While lovely in form— brunette hair that
glinted red at the tips, high cheekbones, green eyes— she came from rugged
North Georgia mountain stock and was characteristically strong-willed and
independent. Someday she hoped to teach English.

By 1913, the Smiths had two children— six-year-old Mary Lou (after her
mother) and three-year-old Frank— and they lived on Lucile Avenue in
Atlanta's smart West End section. Their bungalow took a bow to tradition
on its front porch, where chairs and a wooden swing bespoke lazy summer
evenings. Inside, however, the emphasis was decidedly modern: indoor
plumbing, an up-to-date kitchen and a spacious sleeping porch where the
entire brood— in keeping with the rage for fresh air that was sweeping the
nation— could inhale the night breezes. But lest a visitor think he'd entered
the sanctum of some cosmopolite, the backyard would disabuse him of the
error, for this well-worn expanse was the exclusive province of two goats,
Billy and Dan. On Sunday afternoons, Smith hitched carts to the animals,
summoned trusty Caesar— a massive Saint Bernard-collie mix— and orga-
nized excursions for his daughter and son that left no doubt as to his red-
clay origins.

On the surface, then, William Smith was the archetypal Southern male. Yet
on a deeper level— where his concern for racial justice arose— there were
profound differences, and one of the earliest, most dramatic manifestations
of these differences occured far from his native Georgia.

On a summer day in 1901, the streets of Quebec, Canada, were lined with
crowds awaiting the arrival of the duke and duchess of Cornwall— the
future King George V and Queen Mary of England. Guarding the parade

A TRAMP ALUMNUS 157

route was a batallion of red-coated troops, one of whom was a very young
Smith.

Smith's temporary position as a private in Her Majesty's 85th Regiment
had been arranged through the wire-pulling of friends, and it was the high-
light of an adventure that had begun four months earlier. Originally, he
and his University of Georgia Law School roommate were going to spend
two years bicycling around the world, but after graduation the roommate
changed his mind. Smith, however, was not deterred. With $65 in his wallet
and a dirk and pistol in his pocket, he'd climbed atop his machine and ped-
aled away from Athens alone. Existing, as he'd subsequently write, on "half
rations of an inferior grade, sleeping in jails, box cars, unfinished buildings,
church door steps, barns, woods and equine hotels," he'd inched northward,
reaching Washington, then New York City— where for ten days he lived
under a flight of stairs at Broadway and Fourteenth Street— and finally
Quebec.

A crimson uniform, however, was not for Smith. ("If any Southern boy
has inherited a prejudice against the 'stars and stripes,' " he'd later recall,
"he should visit some alien land, and be thrilled through at the sight of his
country's flag.") After performing a few more ceremonial duties connected
with the royal visit, he resumed his peregrinations. From Montreal, he
shipped as a deckhand on the steamboat Hamilton to Toronto. Then he
bicycled to Niagara Falls. Following an unintentionally long stop at the
International Bridge (several days earlier, President William McKinley had
been shot in nearby Buffalo at the Pan-American Exposition, and although
his assassin had been arrested, border crossings were prohibited for a time),
Smith proceeded to Buffalo. There, he took a "cheap trip" through the
exposition. Then he departed for points west, working his way across the
Great Lakes to Chicago on the E. P. Wilbur, a four-stick freighter.

With winter clamping down, Smith turned south, but he was in no hurry
to reach home. Earning money by shoveling coal or unloading freight, the
lawyer hoboed through Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Mississippi, eventu-
ally arriving in New Orleans. There, he labored briefly on the docks, but
after hearing that hefty sums could be made "cutting cane on a sugar plan-
tation," he left for the Delta. The work, however, was brutal, so it was on to
Dallas and Mexico.

Sometime during January or February 1902, Smith returned to Atlanta
riding the blinds on a fast passenger train. All told, he had been away seven
months. He was jobless and nearly broke (he'd spent his grubstake, lost his
pistol, and his bicycle and dirk had been stolen), but he considered the
expedition a great success. As he'd later put it, he'd "seen something of
America before settling down," worked side by side with "Chinese, dagoes

I58 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

and negroes," and "learned a great deal about his fellow Americans in all
levels and walks of life," especially those "so unfortunate as to have hardly
more than food, clothes, and shelter." Yet what makes the trip crucial to any
understanding of Smith and vital to a comprehension of the bond he felt
with the black race has little to do with experiences gained or sympathies
broadened. Instead, one must ask why Smith embarked on the journey at
all, why he truly was— as the editors of the University of Georgia student
magazine titled the account he wrote of his exploits— "A Tramp Alumnus."

Smith was only 22 when he lit out for the territories, but already he bore
the markings of, if not a future governor, then at least a man destined for a
more auspicious start in life than a law practice dedicated to defending
poor Negroes.

It was at the state university in Athens— where he had enrolled upon
graduating from North Georgia— that Smith had made the sort of noises
that suggested he was a comer. First, he'd joined a fraternity, Sigma Nu,
that, while not as tied to the capitol as such rookeries as Sigma Alpha
Epsilon and Kappa Alpha, included in its 1902 pledge class the lank-locked
boy from Sugar Creek, Georgia, who would dominate state politics for the
next fifty years: Eugene Talmadge. Of greater significance, though, was the
fact that Smith, building on what he'd accomplished at North Georgia, had
quickly risen to the top of the school's preeminent debating society.

To be a champion rhetorician at the University of Georgia at the turn of
the century was to hold nearly as exalted a position on campus as did the
quarterback of the Bulldog football eleven. Week after week, the student
newspaper, The Red and Black, featured the exploits of the college's verbal
warriors, whether in competition among themselves or with teams from
other schools, on its front page. The principal clubs— Phi Kappa and Demos-
thenian— faced each other from opposite sides of the campus's main quad-
rangle in seeming equipoise, but while each had its merits, Demosthenian
had by far the more storied pedigree. In its federalist-period temple dur-
ing the years before seccession, such legendary figures as Robert Toombs,
the firebrand who in 1861 had announced Georgia's intention to leave the
Union by shouting from the United States Senate floor, "Georgia is on the
war path! We are as ready to fight now as we ever shall be," had honed their
rhetorical skills. By the time Smith joined in 1900, Demosthenian's mem-
bers were no longer arguing the need to expand slave territory and were
instead hashing out such contemporary issues as "Resolved that the Inter-
ference with Strikes by Judicial Injunction Is a Menace to the Liberties of
the Working Class." Still, Demosthenian was a shrine to the Old Order, and
as the society's "senior orator," Smith was not only its star speaker but the
carrier of the flame.

Just how utterly William Smith had surmounted this fabled Southern

A TRAMP ALUMNUS 159

institution— and how secure his future must have seemed— had been made
abundantly clear on February 19, 1901, when he'd taken his place in the pul-
pit of the university chapel and facing a packed house that included not
only the entire faculty and student body but the girls of the Lucy Cobb
Institute, delivered one of the school year's most anticipated orations:
Demosthenian's centennial anniversary address. Stylishly outfitted for the
occasion in tux and tails, young Smith had for once told an audience what it
wanted to hear. True, he'd managed to challenge his fellow Demosthenians
to honor the past by confronting the problems of the present, declaring:
"The Northern states with their better educational facilities have out-
stripped us in the race for prosperity. Should treasures be poured into our
coffers, we could aid in the work of educating the sons and daughters of our
State." But first and foremost, he'd paid homage to tradition. Robert E. Lee,
Toombs, the valiant Demosthenians who'd died for the lost cause— all
received bouquets. Furthermore, Smith had indulged in a little atypical
race baiting. Touching on the scientific wonders that the twentieth century,
Demosthenian's second century, would witness, he'd predicted that rocket
travel to other planets would produce a happy result: "Negroes will be ban-
ished as far as possible to Neptune [and] the Caucasian will stay upon this
orb, and the 'Stars and Stripes' will wave over all." In summation, Smith had
borrowed from Thomas More, likening each of his fellow Demosthenians
to a "vase in which roses have once been distilled. You may shatter the vase,
if you will, but the scent of the roses will cling round it still." That scent, of
course, was the scent of an all-encompassing heritage, of Southern history.

For a shining moment, then, William Smith had stood atop the edifice of
the Old South, and by his lights, he should have found a starting place for
himself in the ranks of the state's legal aristocracy. Perhaps an advanta-
geous judicial clerkship would have been in order, or maybe a position with
a venerable Atlanta or Augusta firm. But in the end, Smith— son of Dixie
though he was— was never going to be embraced by the bar's elite, for while
he may have bestrode the symbol of the ancien regime, he had not emerged
from its dusty reality, nor could he have, for quite literally, he had no family.

By the time William Smith had entered law school, he was alone in the
world. His father, William Sr.— a salesman for an Augusta, Georgia, brick
manufacturer— had died in 1889. A few years later, in 1896, Smith's mother,
Dora, followed her husband to the grave. This left just Bill— then sixteen—
and his older sister, also named Dora, then eighteen. Drawing on a small
inheritance, the two had moved to mountainous Dahlonega, where they'd
settled in a rambling boardinghouse owned by a colorful local, one Aunt
Barney. The dream was that brother and sister would attend North Geor-
gia, and in the spring of 1897, they'd begun classes. But this attempt to cre-
ate a semblance of normality was soon dashed, for it was also in 1897 that

l60 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Dora contracted chorea, a debilitating nervous disorder. On August 24, fol-
lowing a nasty fall, she died in her brother's arms.

How William Smith endured these losses can only be imagined, for while
he'd later write perceptively about other painful subjects, he never touched
on this period. Possibly, his childhood had prepared him for such trials, for
his father may have been the sort of profligate who leaves a son no choice
but to grow up fast. At the elder Smith's funeral in 1889, the Reverend
Lansing Burrows, pastor of Augusta's First Baptist Church, had intriguingly
remarked: "Of late the cares and pressures of business had dulled his youth-
ful experience of grace [but] God visited him about four years ago and he
returned to his place beneath the throne." If Smith Sr. fell from grace in the
usual way, if he was an improvident tippler, then one can speculate that
Smith Jr., who eschewed drink, had been fending for himself a long time.
Another clue to the young man's resolve might be found in the ringingly
titled address he gave in Atlanta in 1900 when he again represented North
Georgia at the Southern Oratorical Contest: "The Triumph of Individual-
ism." But however Smith managed it, this much is certain: He not only sur-
vived, he flourished. Yet as he ascended to the pinnacle of college-boy
success, he found that his deprivations had transformed him into what for
the era was a rarity below the Mason-Dixon Line: a young man unbound.

In 1900, the white South— as it still would be on the day Mary Phagan
was found murdered— was rigidly divided into two classes, both based on
family. You could be a patrician, or you could be a cracker. What you could
not be was neither, for while there was some transmigration between these
spheres, so powerful were their respective social, cultural and financial
gravitational fields that few people fell between them, and even those who
did eventually allied with one or the other. The appearance, then, of an
independent being hurtling into adulthood without parents, connections
or money, was seen if not as a threat to the established order then at the
least as the equivalent of an unnamed and hence worrisome comet arcing
through the heavens. Thus when William Smith, even though he'd left the
university trailing clouds of glory, returned from his wanderings, he discov-
ered that the doors to the state's legal establishment were closed to him. As
he would later write:

Upon arriving at Atlanta, I made application to a number of prominent
law firms. Failing in securing an opening in any law office as I was practi-
cally a stranger I decided to open my own law office and did so. No matter
how difficult the way, I determined to go forward.

And so William Smith hung out his shingle and started looking for
clients, and while he never put it in so many words, as he surveyed the

A TRAMP ALUMNUS l6l

bumptious turn-of-the-century capital of the New South, he saw thousands
of Negro freedmen— at the time, only 39 years removed from bondage. The
gulf between this young lawyer— this white freedman— and these blacks
was vast, yet not so vast that gazing across it, each could not perceive a kin-
dred spirit. It was in that instant of recognition that the path to Jim Conley 's
jail cell began.

NINE

Skirmishes

Just days after Jim Conley signed his final affidavit, a series of shrieks
and protestations loud enough to penetrate a closed door exploded
from Hugh Dorsey's office. The source of these cries was Minola
McKnight, the 20-year-old black woman who cooked for the Franks
and the Seligs. Only a few minutes earlier, Minola had been taken into cus-
tody at the 68 East Georgia Avenue home the families shared and brought
to the Thrower Building. Though at first blush this frightened creature did
not seem the sort who could have shed light on the Phagan case, the solici-
tor had reason to believe that she possessed a critical piece of information—
the time Leo Frank arrived home for lunch on April 26.

To Dorsey, the precise minute Frank sat down at the table the afternoon
of the murder had suddenly become a matter of utmost importance. During
the past week, the solicitor had determined that if, as Conley insisted, Frank
began dictating the murder notes at 1:00 p.m., he could not possibly have
finished the task, rushed upstairs to confer with the laborers Arthur White
and Harry Denham regarding the status of their work, escorted Mrs. White
out of the factory and then made a ten-minute trolley trip across town—
all before 1:20, the hour that not only he but his parents-in-law swore
he reached home. There was, however, an ostensibly far more objective
authority yet to be consulted— the dutiful black soul who'd prepared and
served Frank's meal.

The interrogation of Minola McKnight was, by all accounts, an ugly spec-
tacle. According to the Georgian, Dorsey submitted the woman to "the
severest sort of grilling." In this, he was assisted by Detectives Starnes and
Campbell. Yet these intimidating white men bothered Minola less than a
supposedly sympathetic black man who also participated in the session.
That man was her husband, Albert. It was Albert who'd informed his supe-
riors at work— who in turn called Dorsey— that his wife had told him Frank
didn't arrive home until after 1:30 on April 26, and it was now Albert who
was most unrelenting in the effort to persuade Minola to confirm this ver-
sion of events.

But Albert's exertions were to no avail. Despite his entreaties and admo-

SKIRMISHES 163

nitions, Minola not only refused to verify her husband's account, she
accused him of lying to the authorities. The two had recently quarreled, she
maintained, and Albert had fabricated his tale in an attempt to get back at
her. From this rock, Minola would not budge. Following several fruitless
hours, Dorsey ordered her arrest on the charge of suspicion. While the
prospect of going to jail further upset the cook, it didn't change her mind.
As she was being booked, she repeatedly shouted to the boys at headquar-
ters: "I don't know a thing about it." And long into the evening, she kept
up a defiant chatter out her cell window, proclaiming her innocence and
Frank's, too.

A night behind bars apparently failed to soften Minola's resolve, but the
next afternoon, something did. The process began when Campbell and
Starnes reappeared and led the prisoner from her cell to a room adjacent to
the detectives' third-floor bullpen. There, Albert McKnight was again wait-
ing, this time in the company of a lawyer named George Gordon, and two
white businessmen— Ernest H. Pickett and Roy L. Craven— each of whom
had a decided interest in this matter. Noted the Constitution:

Both men are employees of the Beck & Gregg hardware concern, the head
of which, L. H. Beck, is foreman of the grand jury which indicted Leo
Frank. Significance is attached to this connection of the jury's foreman.
The veil of mystery is lifted [further] by the fact that Albert McKnight, hus-
band of the imprisoned servant, is also a porter at the Beck & Gregg estab-
lishment.

In other words, Albert worked for Pickett and Craven, who in turn worked
for a man without whose cooperation Dorsey could not have secured an
indictment against Frank. It was all very cozy, so much so that after Attor-
ney Gordon obligingly retired to a hallway, the detectives surrendered
Minola to the Beck & Gregg contingent's care, not returning until a couple
hours later, at which point, following a brief conversation with the woman,
Starnes produced pen and paper, then summoned a familiar figure —
departmental secretary C. Gay February. Shortly thereafter, Minola gave
her statement, whereupon she was freed.

Had Hugh Dorsey succeeded in plugging the leaks that had plagued the
state since day one, the contents of the piece of paper to which Minola's
name was now affixed might not have been revealed until the trial. In fact,
soon after the affidavit was obtained, the solicitor told the Constitution: "I
will not talk regarding the McKnight woman. Too much publicity at this
stage will do inestimable injury." The higher-ups at 175 Decatur Street did
not, however, share Dorsey's reticence. Quite to the contrary, Newport

164 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Lanford was so eager to publicize the coup that he instructed a typist to
pound out carbons of Minola's statement for all three newspapers, and
within hours extras were rolling off the presses. Boomed the Georgian:

cook's sensational affidavit

The most sensational aspect of Minola McKnight's statement concerned
not the time Frank had appeared for lunch on April 26 but the time he'd
departed. Minola still clung to the family line that the superintendent had
arrived home at 1:20, but in a devastating revision, she'd added that he'd
rushed off ten minutes later without touching his food, a direct contradic-
tion of Frank's testimony at the inquest, where he'd sworn that he'd spent
half an hour at the house conversing with Lucille and his mother-in-law
before they left for the opera, dining with his father-in-law, then, once lunch
was finished and the older man had strolled into the backyard, stretching
out on the living room sofa for a cigarette and a nap. According to Minola,
however, the superintendent had done none of these things, had in fact
quickly made himself scarce. As to why he'd been in such a hurry, the cook
didn't say, but the clear implication was that he and Jim Conley had unfin-
ished business back at the factory.

For all of this, Minola's affidavit would not have prompted the Constitu-
tion to term it "fully as startling as the recent confession of James Conley,"
had it not been for her other revelations, which involved what purportedly
transpired in the house at 68 East Georgia Avenue the weekend of the mur-
der and in the days that followed.

On the subject of Frank's behavior the night of Saturday, April 26,
Minola painted a picture tending to confirm the detectives' theory— born
of Lucille's comment the next morning to John Black regarding the deple-
tion of the house liquor cabinet— that the superintendent had been drunk:

Sunday, Miss Lucille said to Mr. Selig that Mr. Frank didn't sleep so
good Saturday night. She said he . . . wouldn't let her sleep with him, and
she said she slept on the floor on the rug by the bed because he was drink-
ing. Miss Lucille said Sunday that Mr. Frank told her Saturday night that
he was in trouble, that he didn't know the reason why he would murder,
and he told his wife to get his pistol and let him kill himself. I heard Miss
Lucille say that to Mrs. Selig. It got away with Mrs. Selig mighty bad. She
didn't know what to think.

Then there was the vexing matter of the many days that had passed
between Frank's arrest and Lucille's return visit to the Tower, a matter that
Minola said dismayed her, too:

SKIRMISHES 165

I don't know why Mrs. Frank didn't come to see her husband, but it
was a pretty good while before she come to see him, maybe two weeks.
She . . . said: "Minola, I don't know what I am going to do."

Finally, Minola alleged that her employers, upon hearing that Hugh
Dorsey planned to question her, tried to buy her silence:

When I left home to go to the Solicitor General's office they told me
to mind how I talked. Up to the time of the murder I was getting $3.50
a week. But last week she paid me $4, and one week she paid me
$6.50 . . . One week Mrs. Selig give me $5, but it wasn't for my work.

They just said, "Here is $5, Minola," but of course I understood what
they meant even if they didn't tell me anything ... I understood it was a tip
for me to keep quiet. They would tell me to mind how I talked, and Miss
Lucille would give me a hat.

While Dorsey would have preferred the publication of Minola Mc-
Knight's affidavit to have been delayed, now that it was in print, he at-
tempted to seize the tactical advantage. In one stroke, he declared, he had
not only buttressed Conley's story but torn the roof off the Franks' home,
revealing that Leo's anxiety the morning Mary Phagan's body was discov-
ered was but the half of it. Moreover, he had teased out another simmering
issue— Lucille's failure to visit her husband behind bars— and introduced a
new one: the family's purported attempt to bribe a witness. By all rights, the
solicitor should have again been able to proclaim victory. Yet he could not.

Even as the McKnight statement was being splashed across Atlanta's
front pages, the overwhelming reaction was that Dorsey had overplayed his
hand. The Georgian, its decision to showcase the story notwithstanding,
scoffed at the affidavit, cautioning in a subhead:

Incoherent Statement by Employee of

Frank Household That Must Not

Be Taken as Legal Evidence Until

Heard and Corroborated in Court.

And the Hearst sheet wasn't alone in its skepticism. Noted the Journal:
"The affidavit is nearly all hearsay evidence, and therefore inadmissible in
court." Even more worrisome, added others, was the role Albert McKnight
and his superiors at Beck & Gregg had played in the drama. Most damag-
ing, though, was the fact that fewer than twenty-four hours after the state-
ment appeared, its author repudiated it.

Following her release from headquarters, Minola had returned to the

l66 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

tiny shack she and her husband shared several blocks from the Franks'
house. It was there that a Georgian reporter spoke to her:

"Did you sign any affidavit in the office of Chief Lanford?" was the first
question asked of the McKnight woman.

"No, sir, I never had a pen or pencil in my hand," she replied.

"Have you read what this affidavit says as it was published in the
papers?"

"It was read to me; I can't read."

"Is there anything in there that you said?"

"No, sir; it's most all a pack of lies."

"Where did they get all that stuff, then?"

"I don't know sir; I don't know."

When Hearst's man pressed Minola as to why her counsel had allowed the
investigators to put words in her mouth, she bristled: "I ain't got no lawyer,
'cept God. He's my lawyer. You jus' put that in the paper. You jus' tell them
that I ain't got no lawyer, 'cept God."

Minola's affidavit could not, of course, be made to go away simply
because she now disavowed it. Furthermore, the authenticity of her recanta-
tion was undermined by the fact that it appeared in a paper whose propen-
sity to embellish the truth was well known and whose prodefense leanings
were continually growing more apparent. Nonetheless, Minola's renuncia-
tion—which was picked up prominently by the Journal and even grudg-
ingly acknowledged by the Constitution— called into question both the
methods detectives had used in obtaining her statement and those they'd
used in obtaining others, particularly Conley's. For the first time since seiz-
ing control of the investigation, Dorsey found himself overexposed and
vulnerable.

The same day Dorsey ordered Minola McKnight's arrest, Luther Rosser
refused comment to a Journal reporter trying to divine the defense's pre-
trial strategy. "Luther Z. Rosser maintains his sphinxlike attitude and
declines to discuss the theory of the defense," the paper observed. Such
taciturnity by Frank's counsel— "Luther Z. Rosser maintains his usual
silence," echoed the next morning's Constitution— had become common-
place in the month since the inquest concluded. Not only had Rosser said
nothing to contest the rumors of sexual misconduct swirling around Frank,
but he'd made no effort to rebut Conley's affidavits. In part, he may simply
have wanted to avoid repeating the mistake he'd made earlier when by
speaking out he antagonized the police. Then again, he may have been dis-

SKIRMISHES 167

tracted by other business. After all, the week Conley unburdened himself,
he'd been away in Rabun County helping the Georgia Railway and Electric
Company push its Tallulah Gorge power project through the courts. In the
aftermath of the McKnight debacle, however, Rosser found his voice. It
belonged to his client's wife.

Lucille Frank's open letter to the citizens of Atlanta ran in all three
papers the day after the McKnight affidavit appeared. By turns aggrieved,
exasperated and exhortatory, the letter made it plain that Rosser— who was
doubtlessly speaking through Lucille— was ready to take the offensive:

The action of the Solicitor General in arresting and imprisoning our
family cook because she would not voluntarily make a false statement
against my innocent husband brings a limit to patience. The wrong is
not chargeable to a detective acting under the necessity of shielding his
own reputation against attacks in the newspapers, but of an intelligent,
trained lawyer whose sworn duty is as much to protect the innocent as to
punish the guilty. My information is that this Solicitor has admitted that no
crime is charged against this cook and that he had no legal right to have
her . . . imprisoned.

That the Solicitor, sworn to maintain the law, should thus falsely arrest
one against whom he has no charge and whom he does not even suspect
and torture her, contrary to the laws, to force her to give evidence tending
to swear away the life of an innocent man, is beyond belief.

Where will this end? My husband and my family and myself are the
innocent sufferers now, but who will be the next to suffer? I suppose the
witnesses tortured will be confined to the class who are not able to employ
lawyers to relieve them from the torture in time to prevent their being
forced to give false affidavits, but the lives sworn away may come from any
class . . .

It is not surprising that my cook should sign an affidavit to relieve her-
self from torture that has been applied to her for four hours ... It would be
surprising if she would not, under such circumstances, give an affidavit.

This torturing process can be used to produce testimony to be published
in the newspapers to prejudice the case of anyone the Solicitor sees fit to
accuse ... It is hard to believe that practices of this nature will be counte-
nanced anywhere in the world outside of Russia.

Lucille's arraignment of Dorsey concluded, her tone softened. After
denying the charges advanced in Minola's affidavit ("My husband was
home for lunch and in the evening at the hours he has stated on the day of
the murder . . . Neither on Saturday nor Saturday night, nor on Sunday, nor
at any other time, did my husband by word or act . . . demean himself oth-

l68 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

erwise than as an innocent man"), she described the hardships she'd suf-
fered since Leo's arrest:

I have been compelled to endure without fault, either on the part of my
husband or myself, more than it falls to the lot of most women to bear.
Slanders have been circulated in the community to the effect that my hus-
band and myself were not happily married, and every conceivable rumor
has been put afloat that would do him and me harm.

Then, in closing, Lucille did something she'd heretofore not done. She
publicly proclaimed her faith in Leo:

I know my husband is innocent. No man could make the good husband
to a woman that he has been to me and be a criminal . . . Being a woman, I
do not understand the tricks and arts of detectives and prosecuting offi-
cers, but I do know Leo Frank, and his friends know him, and I know, and
his friends know, that he is utterly incapable of committing the crime that
these detectives and this Solicitor are seeking to fasten upon him.

The most effective thing about Lucille's letter was that it left Dorsey
almost no room to operate. If he fired back, he ran the risk of appearing to
badger a long-suffering woman. If he said nothing, he implicitly endorsed
her allegations.

Once again, though, Dorsey proved himself to be nimble. Speaking off-
the-cuff shortly after Lucille's communication was made public, he brushed
aside the notion that his investigators were pressuring witnesses. "Minola
McKnight was not 'sweated' while she was in my office, nor was she
'sweated' anywhere else," he told the Journal "Merely she was confronted
with her husband." Then, in a formal response released the next day to all
the papers, the solicitor danced away from the substance of Lucille's
charges entirely. Coolly, pointedly, he sought to present himself as a disin-
terested public servant simply carrying out the at times disagreeable tasks
dictated by his office:

I have read the statement in the Atlanta newspapers over the signature
of Mrs. Leo M. Frank, and I have only to say, without in anywise taking
issue with her premises, as I might, that the wife of a man accused of crime
would probably be the last person to learn all of the facts establishing his
guilt, and certainly would be the last person to admit his culpability ... A
bill of indictment has been found by the Grand Jury, composed of impar-
tial and respected citizens of this community, and as Solictor General of
this circuit, charged with the duty of aiding in the enforcement of our

SKIRMISHES 169

laws ... I welcome all evidence from any source that will aid an impartial
jury, under the charge of the court, in determining the guilt or innocence
of the accused. Perhaps the most unpleasant feature incident to the posi-
tion of prosecuting attorney arises from the fact that punishment of the
guilty inevitably brings suffering to relations who are innocent of partici-
pation in the crime, but who must share the humiliation flowing from its
exposure.

This, however, is an evil attendant upon crime, and the courts and their
officers cannot allow their sympathies for the innocent to retard the vigor-
ous prosecution of those indicted for the commission of crime, for were it
otherwise, sentiment, and not justice, would dominate the administration
of our laws.

Dorsey wasn't finished. The McKnight episode had also presented him
with a splendid opportunity to thrust a dagger through the heart of a par-
ticularly loose-lipped demon— Newport Lanford. The moment Minola's
affidavit had appeared in print, the solicitor had written the detective chief
"urging him to take steps to prevent [more] 'leakage.' "Then, following the
publication of Lucille's letter, he went further, calling on the grand jury to
investigate 175 Decatur Street. In order to stave off such a probe, Lanford
quickly caved in, commanding his men, himself presumably included, to
stop discussing the case with reporters. The Constitution, whose disdain for
the police hierarchy was only heightened by its pro-prosecution stance,
applauded, editorializing:

If the Phagan tragedy shall produce no other result than the recent
"shut-up" order of the detective department it will not be entirely lacking
in compensation.

Yet for all Dorsey's deftness, there can be no doubt that the McKnight
episode had hurt the state's case, doing for the defense what the defense
had seemed incapable of doing for itself —creating a platform from which
Rosser could both cast aspersions on Dorsey's methods while beginning
the task of reversing a month's worth of bad publicity about Frank. As the
Georgian's Old Police Reporter put it: "To be strictly truthful, I must say
that the man in the street believes Leo M. Frank guilty of the murder of
Mary Phagan but the statement in defense of her husband given out by Mrs.
Leo Frank had a steadying effect and has cleared the atmosphere consider-
ably." Hoping to capitalize on the change of climate, Rosser jumped right
back into the papers with a second open letter from Lucille to the citizens
of Atlanta. This time, the obvious intention was to nail the solicitor with his
own words:

170 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

I think fairness to Mr. Frank requires that the public should clearly
understand Mr. Dorsey's position as stated by him in his reply to my state-
ment that he proposes to use testimony which comes from witnesses as the
result of torture.

His real position, as gleaned from his card, can be stated in the following
sentence which he employed:

"I have only to say without in anywise taking issue with her premises as
I might . . . that I welcome all evidence from any source that will aid an
impartial jury, under the charge of the court, in determining the guilt or
innocence of the accused."

That is to say, he thinks it unnecessary to waste time in disputing the fact
that the detectives are procuring testimony from witnesses by torture. He
considers this point immaterial. He believes he is thoroughly justified in
using tortured testimony if it is turned over to him, for he says: "I welcome
all evidence from any source."

The Journal and the Constitution stated that he had my cook arrested
and carried to his office and quizzed to such an extent as to drive her into
hysterics, and that after this he sent her screaming to the police sta-
tion . . . After she left his office she was taken to the detectives' torture
chamber, and, according to the Atlanta Constitution, she there had the third
degree applied to her to the point of exhaustion, after which, she made an
affidavit, which the detectives . . . gave out to the papers.

The solicitor had no charge against this cook and did not suspect her of
any crime. Yet Mr. Dorsey waves this aside as trivial . . . because he says: "I
welcome all evidence from any source," clearly implying that he will take it
from the torture chamber if it is offered to him.

When Mr. Dorsey introduces this third degree evidence to the jury, can
it be supposed that he will at the same time tell the jury that it comes direct
from the torture chamber?

Lucille's new statement made it even harder for Dorsey to elude the
charge that he was strong-arming witnesses, and it transformed his evasive
rhetoric into an issue in its own right. All of which may explain why the
solicitor let the salvo pass and failed to respond to an interview Lucille sub-
sequently gave to the Georgian's Old Police Reporter in which she reaf-
firmed her belief in Leo's innocence, praised his character ("He has always
been the most kind, the most generous, the most thoughtful, the most con-
siderate, and the most affectionate of men") and pointed proudly to his
many charitable affiliations. While Lucille did confess that her husband was
"no saint," the sole failings she could recall were that he smoked cigarettes
and drank beer— although never to the point of intoxication. Otherwise,

SKIRMISHES 171

she said, "He ever has been just the plain, more or less studious and serious
minded, Leo, gentle and thoughtful, sincere and true. He is my husband, and
I love him very much."

Lucille Frank's avowed belief in Leo's moral integrity could not, of
course, explain away the numerous salacious stories to the contrary or
expunge the charge against him. Furthermore, as the superintendent's wife
admitted in her second letter, her comments carried no legal weight: "Mr.
Dorsey and the detectives know that I cannot go on the witness stand and
deny the affidavits they have published in the newspapers. Under the law
a wife will not be permitted to testify either for or against her husband.
The law puts this absolute seal upon my lips." Still, she had what for now
amounted to the last word.

During the early days of June 1913, Luther Rosser basked in the glow of
accomplishment and acclaim. Quite aside from his successful campaign to
give Dorsey a taste of his own medicine, the lawyer had finally vanquished
the hillbilly John Muirs who'd opposed the opening of the Georgia Railway
and Electric Company's Tallulah Gorge power station. Now the plant's tur-
bines could generate electricity, industries across the state could expand
and, not incidentally, wealthy Atlantans could build vacation homes over-
looking the crystalline lakes that backed up behind the project's dam. God,
in short, was in Rosser's heaven, and if things developed as he intended, the
man who posed the most serious threat to Leo Frank would be indicted for
the murder of Mary Phagan before he could ever utter a word in court.

Rosser launched his attack on Jim Conley just two days after Lucille
Frank's last letter appeared in print by issuing yet another statement to the
newspapers. This time, though, he spoke for himself, and as was his style, he
made no attempts at diplomacy. The state's star witness was "a very ordi-
nary, ignorant, brutal negro not unacquainted with the stockade [who]
began to talk, and negro-like, to talk so as to protect himself." Newport
Lanford, meanwhile, was if not "insane" then "temporarily out of his head."
Had the detective chief and his officers "kept open minds seeking only the
murderer and not seeking to vindicate their opinions, the negro would have
by this time told the truth." Then there was the process whereby the police
had secured Conley's affidavits, a process for which the defense counsel
reserved his deepest scorn:

Conley made one statement. It did not meet the announced opinions of
Lanford. He made another. This second was not up to the mark; it did not
sufficiently show Frank's guilt. Another was made, which was supposed to

172 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

be nearer the mark. Whereupon there was great rejoicing. Forgetting all
others, this last statement— reached through great tribulations— was pro-
claimed the truth, and that there would be no other statement . . .

But what a statement! So full of contradictions, so evidently made for
self-protection and wherein was so easily apparent the guiding hand of
detectives.

Rosser's intent was not so much to brutalize Conley or ridicule Lanford
as to persuade the judge who would preside at Frank's trial— 68-year-old
Leonard Roan, a well-respected jurist who in the 1890s had been Rosser's
law partner— to order the Negro's transfer from the station house back to
the Fulton County Tower. As long as the state's star witness remained in
police custody and thus in the hands of officers with a vested interest in
securing Frank's conviction, the lawyer argued, the truth would never
emerge:

This negro is not to give any other or further statement if the detective
department can prevent, unless made under their supervision and direc-
tion. He must, at all times, be under the influence and control of Lanford.
He must have Lanford's sucking bottle at all times to his lips, sucking Lan-
ford's views and theories of this case.

Roan's response to Rosser's sortie was swift and sure. Early the next day,
he informed Dorsey that he was inclined to return Conley to the Tower. On
this point, the judge asserted, the law was explicit: The Negro was a material
witness, and material witnesses belonged in the county facility, where Sher-
iff Wheeler Mangum was charged with shielding them from anyone—
detectives included— bent upon influencing their testimony.

The defense was, of course, elated by the news, for Rosser believed that
once Conley was freed from what the Georgian termed "police petting,"
he'd revert to form and talk to the press, becoming not only his own worst
enemy but the prosecution's, too, for inevitably, he would slip and reveal
what actually happened on April 26, which, by the lawyer's reckoning, was
this: That Saturday morning, desperate for cash and "made passionately
insane by liquor," Jim had been lurking in the pencil factory lobby. When he
spotted Mary Phagan, mesh purse in hand, descending the stairs from
Frank's office, temptation overcame him. He struck the girl, dropped her
body into the basement through the elevator shaft, then clambered down
the scuttle hole ladder. Upon discovering that the child wasn't dead, Conley
gagged her with strips of cloth ripped from her underskirt, tied her around
the neck with a length of twine fished from the floor and dragged her to the
rear of the cellar. There, he strangled her. As to the issue of rape, Rosser

SKIRMISHES 173

considered it either inconvenient— its mention could rekindle the charges
of impropriety swirling around Frank— or irrelevant, as he'd concluded Jim
had been motivated less by sex than by greed. That is, the lawyer believed
that Conley's reason for attacking little Mary had been to rob her. Other-
wise, why had her purse, an item whose $1.20 in contents could hardly have
interested Frank, disappeared? Finally, there were the murder notes, in
Rosser's view the unalloyed product of the Negro mind. Only a Negro
could have concocted a scheme to pin the crime on some other Negro, and
only a Negro could have imagined that anyone would swallow the notes'
logic. It was all clear, and Rosser was certain that once Conley was no
longer being force-fed his lines by Newport Lanford, the grand jury would
see. This, at least, was how things were supposed to work.

Shortly after Roan expressed his inclination to transfer Conley to the Tower,
Hugh Dorsey— joined by William Smith— appeared in Judge Roan's cham-
bers and filed a petition meant to derail the defense lawyer's plans. Yet
exactly what the solicitor had in mind was hard to comprehend, for his peti-
tion was peculiar. He argued neither against Conley's return to the county
facility nor for his continued incarceration at headquarters. Instead, he
asserted that Jim was not a material witness and should be released from
custody altogether.

Rather than grant or deny Dorsey's strange request, Roan set a hearing
on the matter for two days hence.

During the brief interim, the logic behind Dorsey's move became appar-
ent. He still regarded Conley as a material witness, yet he realized that if the
Negro retained that status, Roan had no legal alternative but to remand
him to the Tower. To avoid such an outcome, the solictor intended to engi-
neer Conley's release, then rearrest him as a suspect— though he suspected
him of nothing— and hold him at headquarters indefinitely. And the beauty
of it was, Rosser couldn't do a thing about it. Should Frank's lawyer fight
the petition on its merits, he would find himself arguing that the Negro
should be held to testify against his client. If he contested the final plan, he
would be forced to maintain that the Negro was not a suspect.

Dorsey's petition had checkmated the mighty Rosser. Still, both sides
had to go through the charade of Roan's hearing and accordingly, a small
army of lawyers and reporters convened in his chambers at 10:00 a.m. on
Friday, June 13. Though the solicitor's position didn't need bolstering,
William Smith nevertheless produced an affidavit from Conley in which the
Negro asserted that threats had been made against him during his brief stay
in the Tower. Smith also tendered a statement of his own maintaining
that the county lockup was often protected by only a single guard and was

174 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

therefore accessible to anyone intent on harming his client. Meanwhile,
Rosser submitted a statement to Roan as well, but the defense lawyer
appeared resigned to the inevitable. In fact, he termed his communication a
"protest," acknowledging that he was running up the white flag even as he
denounced Dorsey's petition as a "farce meant to continue the present ille-
gal confinement," accused the state of "winking" at justice, archly congratu-
lated Smith for his "wise" decision to abandon Conley to the prosecution's
whims, then raked Newport Lanford over the by now familiar coals:

That the detectives should wish to keep Conley in custody and enter-
tain him at the city's expense is not at all surprising. They have already
extracted from him extravagant, unthinkable confessions, three or four in
number. To these statements they have given the widest publicity, and to
the credibility of the last one they have staked their reputations and hope
of place

Can any fair-minded man believe that Lanford is a fair man to be the
custodian of this ignorant negro? What chance would he have to retract
any lie he may have told, or if in a repentant mood he should wish to tell
the truth? This negro in the city prison, in the power of Lanford, apart from
all questions of truth, would be just as dangerous as Lanford would wish
him to be. No one knows that better than Lanford, and no one would feel it
as acutely as will this negro.

For six indignant pages, Rosser carried on this way, yet in the end, his obser-
vations had no bearing on Roan's thinking. Neither, for that matter, did
Smith's. In fact, without reading either man's submission, the judge asked
the lawyers if any of them considered Jim Conley to be a material witness.
Though Dorsey considered him to be exactly that, he said nothing. As for
Rosser, he, too, kept his opinion to himself. With everyone in such seeming
accord, the judge promptly granted the solicitor's petition. It all took under
ten minutes.

Accordingly, at n a.m., Friday, June 13— less than an hour after Roan
made his decision— Newport Lanford appeared at the door of Conley 's sta-
tion house cell and announced: "Well, Jim, I am going to release you."

Though Conley received the news with a bewildered look, he silently
accompanied the detective chief to the desk sergeant's office. After opening
the docket book to the Negro's name, Sergeant A. J. Holcombe entered the
following notation:

Released, June 13, 1913, by order of Judge L. S. Roan, of the superior court,
Stone Mountain Circuit.

SKIRMISHES 175

This formality observed, Lanford took Conley by the arm and walked him
through a door opening into an enclosed auto passageway, then up an al-
ley to Decatur Street. There, as a small crowd watched, the detective chief
relaxed his grip. Jim was a free man. Yet before the Negro could so much
as move, Detective J. F. McGill— who "by some peculiar chance," as the
Journal dryly put it, was stationed on the sidewalk looking for "suspicious
personages"— rearrested him, whisking him back into headquarters, where
Holcombe was, of course, waiting with his docket book. Once the new
charge — "suspicion" — was noted, Lanford returned Conley to his cell, which
was fine by Jim. "I didn't want to get out anyhow," he told his captor— and
that, likely as not, was the truth.

With Conley off-limits, Dorsey was ready for court. He ordered his assis-
tants to organize the guts of his case— the Negro's affidavits, a chart detail-
ing the principals' movements on April 26, depositions regarding Frank's
alleged peccadilloes, chunks of inquest testimony and Dr. Harris's autopsy
report (which the state had finally received but whose contents would not
be revealed until trial). He also hired Frank Hooper— an ex-prosecutor
from Americus, Georgia, who boasted an impressive conviction record— to
serve as his associate. Things, finally, were falling into place, so much so that
despite the date now set for the proceedings to begin— June 30— being
practically upon him, Dorsey decided to take a vacation. After securing a
promise that the grand jury would resist any defense effort to use his
absence to engineer Conley's indictment, he began packing. Yet even with
this contingency covered, the solicitor needed to confer with one last indi-
vidual before leaving town.

Saturday, June 14. In just a few minutes, the afternoon train for New
York would pull out of Atlanta. Up and down the covered sidings that
extended back from the great Moorish fortress of Terminal Station, passen-
gers hurried to their cars. In the distance, a smoke-wreathed locomotive
groaned. Yet standing off to the side, seemingly oblivious to the blur of
activity and the fast-approaching hour of departure, Hugh Dorsey huddled
in conversation with William Smith. The two had a critical piece of business
to discuss. As a matter of course, any lawyer whose client is held more than
a few days on such nebulous grounds as suspicion will initiate habeas cor-
pus proceedings. But Smith, in return for the solicitor's pledge— contingent
on Frank's conviction— to go easy on Conley, agreed to take no such action.
The Negro would remain in jail. Only after consummating this deal— which
amounted to an insurance policy on the state's star witness— did Dorsey
climb aboard.

I76 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

In the wake of Hugh Dorsey's hornswoggling of Luther Rosser, the aware-
ness dawned among such Frank supporters as Sig Montag and Herbert
Haas that the solicitor was a more formidable enemy than had at first been
imagined. Though this realization didn't prompt second thoughts about
Rosser— who, after all, was known less for his sleight of hand than for his
ability to argue a case— it did suggest that it wouldn't hurt to bring in some
new legal blood.

If the mighty Rosser was the gladiator Atlanta's wealthy employed to
smite their foes, Reuben R. Arnold was the envoy they dispatched to
cement business relationships, diffuse conflict and, generally speaking, lend
an air of civility to the transactions through which discreet people adjudi-
cate their differences and secure their fortunes. Grandson of a two-term
Whig congressman from the Tennessee mountain town of Greeneville and
son of a Confederate colonel who, following the Civil War, migrated to
Atlanta and prospered at business and at the bar, Arnold grew up in a world
of privilege at Deerland, the elegant home his father built on Peachtree
Street just north of town. After attending the University of Georgia, he
returned to Atlanta to practice law.

By the summer of 1913, the 45-year-old Arnold had made his name and
his fortune as the principal in a firm whose most lucrative client was the
Atlanta Journal. The lawyer's relationship with the newspaper had its roots
in his long-standing association with its founder, Georgia's junior United
States senator, Hoke Smith. Arnold was one of the politician's most trusted
lieutenants. In fact, the men were so close that in 1910, when Smith took
sick the day before he was scheduled to announce his candidacy against
Joseph M. Brown for the state's governorship, Arnold delivered the cam-
paign kickoff address.

That Hoke Smith tapped Arnold to make such a speech was no surprise,
as the lawyer often served as a mouthpiece for his friends and his class. Dur-
ing the first months of 1913 alone, he'd debated an Anti-Saloon League offi-
cial bent on seeing Georgia's 1908 prohibition law enforced not just at
cheap near-beer saloons but at such august watering holes as the Piedmont
Driving Club; published a statement attacking a provision in the tax laws
that gave tenant farmers (most of them Negro) power to take deductions
that landlords (most of them white) opposed; and— sharing the dais with
Rabbi David Marx— gave the keynote address at the Atlanta Chamber of
Commerce's annual banquet.

What made Arnold an effective presence on either the stump or the
after-dinner podium wasn't so much his speaking ability— although, like
most Southern lawyers of his generation, he could turn a phrase— but the
fact that in words and being he articulated the values his social and financial

SKIRMISHES 177

peers held most dear: property, prosperity, propriety. One of those men for
whom the word "solid" was invented, Arnold stood six feet tall with broad
shoulders and a thick middle and gazed out at an audience through a reas-
suringly bland face animated by soft blue eyes and topped by short blond
hair parted on the side and combed over the ear. He was impressive but not
threatening, handsome but not affected.

All of this, however, is not to say that Arnold was the sort of counsel who
served chiefly as window dressing. He was a good book lawyer, the type
who off the top of his head could dictate, say, the documents necessary to
place a struggling company into receivership. He was also a superb litigator,
more dangerous in court than one might at first imagine. As the Constitu-
tion put it:

The sting of Reuben Arnold is as sharp as an adder. He's mighty polite
about it— injects the poison skillfully, without mussing up the patient's
clothing or causing him any unnecessary loss of blood, but the poison
works just as surely. He is also some goat getter— a sort of polite purloiner
of goats, is Reuben.

Moreover, Arnold possessed an expertise in medical evidence that could
prove of value in a trial where the interpretation of autopsy reports might
determine guilt or innocence.

Still, Mister Rube, as he was deferentially known, was better suited to
winning over a jury than pummeling a witness, more skilled at building up a
misunderstood client than attacking the state. He was the perfect comple-
ment to Luther Rosser.

Word that Reuben Arnold was affiliating with Leo Frank's defense hit
the front pages while Dorsey was out of town. "I hazard not a thing in say-
ing that there is no reason to believe Mr. Frank guilty of this horrible mur-
der," the lawyer declared in his first public comment on the case. Then,
underscoring the assumption at the heart of the defense's thinking, he
added: "I do not believe that any white man committed the crime." Yet for
all the credibility Arnold lent his new client, the fact remained that the non-
white man to whom he was alluding was safely ensconced at the station
house, his allegations unshaken, his presence overshadowing everything
that lay ahead. Whatever it took, the defense had to do something to cripple
Jim Conley's effectiveness before court convened.

On the swelteringly hot afternoon of June 24— six days prior to the date
the trial was scheduled to start— Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold ap-

I78 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

peared in Judge Leonard Roan's chambers. In mid- July, Frank's law-
yers explained, they were both due in court in the distant hamlet of Swains-
boro in connection with the J. W. McNaughton murder case. (In 191 1,
McNaughton, a physician, had been convicted of poisoning his mistress's
husband with arsenic.) Citing the likelihood of a scheduling conflict, the
men sought a postponement. Nonsense, replied Hugh Dorsey, just back
from vacation and on hand to oppose the request. The Frank proceedings
would be history by mid-July. The defense was stalling. Whatever the
virtues of either side's positions, Roan paid them little heed. If the trial
began on June 30, he interjected, it would by necessity be held in the judi-
cial system's cramped and airless temporary home, the Thrower Building.
However, if it could be delayed a month, there was another option. A court-
room in the old Atlanta City Hall— a brick and marble confection at the
corner of Pryor and Hunter streets just across from the nearly completed
Fulton County Courthouse— would be available. While itself dowdy and
undersized, the alternate venue boasted numerous windows— during a
southern summer, no small attribute. There was also, the judge confided,
something else: "Gentlemen, some months ago I promised my wife that I
would take her to the seashore on the week of July 4 and spend some days
there with her."

Such was the aversion toward the prospect of conducting a lengthy trial
in the stultifying Thrower Building and such was the respect for Roan—
who, complaining of fatigue, had added that he could use a break as well—
that the matter ended here. Dorsey dropped his objections and joined
Rosser and Arnold in an enthusiastic discussion of the judge's trip. The
press responded just as congenially, with the Journal splashing a photo-
graph of an implacable-looking Mrs. Roan atop its front page beneath the
headline: she really postponed the frank trial. Yet the bonhomie
and bon voyages aside, all concerned knew that Roan's decision to delay
the proceedings by a month— court would now convene on July 28— consti-
tuted a break for Frank, giving the defense one last opportunity to neutral-
ize the state's star witness.

Unlike the first attack on Jim Conley, which had been predicated on the
notion that the Negro, if left to his own devices, would implicate himself,
the attack Rosser and Arnold now unleashed was carefully calculated and
aggressive. Henceforth, they would operate less like lawyers than investi-
gators, building their case much as the police would against a suspect.
The goal, even at this late hour, remained Conley's indictment for Mary
Phagan's murder. Barring that result, the attorneys hoped to amass such a
body of evidence that come July 28, they could turn the tables on the pros-
ecution, in effect establishing Frank's innocence by proving the Negro's
guilt.

SKIRMISHES 179

The opening shot in the assault on Conley was fired in the July 9 editions
of the Georgian under the front-page banner:

NEW PHAGAN EVIDENCE FOUND

The development that occasioned this headline was the discovery of a piece
of pay envelope bearing Mary Phagan's employee number in the factory
lobby near where Frank's accuser admitted he was sitting on the day of the
killing. The clue, the Hearst sheet argued, pointed "more strongly than ever
to robbery as the original motive for the attack upon the girl," focusing
"suspicion more directly upon Conley." What the Georgian failed to men-
tion, however, was that this piece of evidence was neither new nor univer-
sally agreed upon as reliable.

Both the prosecution and the defense had known of the existence of the
pay envelope scrap for two months. It was part of a cache of equally intrigu-
ing finds located on the afternoon of May 15 in the factory lobby by Pinker-
ton operatives L. P. Whitfield and W. D. MacWorth— the same detectives
who had secured, respectively, the statement from Mrs. Coleman tending to
discredit George Epps and the statement from Etta Mills tending to dis-
credit Nina Formby. According to the report submitted by MacWorth, this
is what the men discovered:

At the trap door I found what I took to be blood stains and also several
pieces of cord used to tie bundles of pencils, and which was entwined in the
pipes of a radiator adjoining the trap door. I also picked up a roll of paper
and on examining it, found it to be the end of an envelope. I could see the
number #186 stamped in the left-hand corner and a name written in lead
pencil. I gave the paper to L.P.W. to take to the daylight, and he returned,
saying that the name on the envelope was M. Phagan. Below the name
could be seen the tops of figures, the plainest of which is the last, an aught.

And there was more. As Whitfield noted in his file, the two also located one
last object:

We then secured an electric light and searched the floor around the trap
door for blood stains, and we found several places that appeared to be
spotted with blood. We also found a club with blood on it.

While the implications of the Pinkerton agents' finds were clear, their
provenance was not. Yes, the club— a stout rolling-pin-like implement used
by draymen to scoot heavy boxes across the floor— could have been wielded
in the attack upon little Mary, inflicting the wound above her left ear. And

l80 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

yes, the tangle of cords— one of which showed indications of having been
freshly cut by a knife— could have provided the length employed to stran-
gle her. And yes, the piece of pay envelope (the "aught" visible beneath the
name corresponded to the zero that would have concluded the line denot-
ing the victim's wage: $1.20) could have been the victim's. But as Lanford
and Dorsey had been asking since the discoveries were made, why hadn't
any of the numerous detectives who'd scoured the factory during the nearly
three weeks that passed between the murder and the day Mac Worth and
Whitfield struck gold noticed these clues? Furthermore, how was it that two
agents who seemed to sympathize with Frank had made the finds? From
the start, the police believed the items were plants.

Yet in the days following the Georgian's exclusive, only the subtlest
hints— the Constitution and Journal failed to run the story, while simultane-
ously rumors began circulating that a rogue faction of Pinkerton detectives
had allied with the defense— indicated there were doubts as to the finds'
authenticity. Around town, the word was that new evidence implicating
Conley had surfaced. Which was just as Frank's lawyers wanted it.

Hard upon the revelation that the dead girl's pay envelope had been
recovered came the news— again courtesy of the Georgian— that an eye-
witness to Mary Phagan's murder had been located. This was Will Green, a
39-year-old Negro carnival worker from St. Louis, whose story, at least as
the paper reported it, did everything but name Jim Conley as the killer:

I was in Atlanta for a few days. I was shooting craps on the first floor [of
the pencil factory] with this negro that Saturday. This fellow was half drunk
and was losing money to me. He got mad and cursed his luck.

Before long a little girl went upstairs. This negro said he was going to
take her money away from her when she came down. I thought he was
fooling at first, but when she came down he started for her. I yelled at him
not to do it, but he kept right on. Then I skipped out, for I didn't want to get
mixed up in any trouble. I stayed around town until the next Monday, and
then I read all about how a little girl had been killed . . . and I knew that
she was the one I had seen come downstairs at the factory.

I got out of town right away and went back to St. Louis.

Will Green's narrative was also not without flaws. As with the clues
located in the factory lobby, the carnival worker's existence had been known
to the police since May, when an informant had wired headquarters from St.
Louis. At the time, the detectives— who'd yet to question Conley and thus
had no reason to believe he had been at the plant on April 26— had reacted
coolly. Later, in the wake of Conley's affidavits, the defense had recognized

SKIRMISHES l8l

Green's import. By then, though, the carnival worker had vanished. During
June, a posse comprised of Pinkerton operatives and Hearst stringers pur-
sued Green down the Mississippi from St. Louis to Cairo, Illinois, then into
Kentucky, Tennessee and finally Birmingham, where, according to the Geor-
gian's July 13 exclusive, the man had been cornered. But the paper had
glossed over the inconvenient fact that Green was not actually in custody,
that he'd merely been traced to the Alabama city. Moreover, its account had
failed to mention the equally salient point that Green's allegations were
hearsay. The Negro had supposedly passed them on to a friend who'd in
turn telegraphed the police. In the brain-numbing glare of the headlines,
however, the holes in the Georgian's tale seemed minor. Most Atlantans
believed that the carnival worker would be in court on July 28 to testify
against Conley. Which, again, was exactly how Frank's lawyers wanted it.

With fresh evidence in hand and an eyewitness allegedly en route, all the
defense needed to complete its case against Conley was a confession, and
by mid- July it was claiming to be in possession of exactly that. William H.
Mincey, a 43 -year-old country schoolteacher who worked weekends for the
American Life Insurance Company, had declared that on the afternoon of
the murder, a drunken Jim Conley had told him he'd killed a girl earlier in
the day. Intense and thin with deep-socketed eyes and a theatrical mus-
tache, Mincey had made a favorable impression on Luther Rosser, and his
sworn affidavit seemed to represent a genuine breakthrough. "We place the
utmost reliance in it," Frank's counsel proclaimed. "It forms one of the
strongest foundations for our belief in the guilt of Jim Conley."

Attesting to the significance of Mincey's statement was the fact that even
the Constitution and Journal gave it ample coverage, yet as with all news
auguring well for Frank, it was the Georgian that played the story hardest,
portioning out chunks of it in a series of increasingly frenzied extras that
culminated with the July 14 publication of a first-person account authored
by Mincey himself. Screamed the front-page double-deck banner:

mincey's own story
Tells How Conley Confessed Killing Girl

As Mincey recounted it, he had watched the Confederate Memorial Day
parade on April 26 and then, hoping to drum up business, walked to Vine
City, the territory he'd been assigned by American Life. Entering the neigh-
borhood on Mitchell Street, he said he'd made calls at homes on Electric
Avenue and Rhodes Street before heading up a dirt path that gave onto
Carter Street. Like most "policy men"— as insurance agents were known to
blacks— Mincey believed he had a gift for recognizing customers. Yet in the

l82 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Negro "with his head leaning down on his chest" sitting in front of a house
off Carter Street, Mincey believed he'd found someone who behaved less
like a prospect than a suspect:

I stopped and got into a conversation with the negro about insurance.
He told me his name was Jim Conley. I saw at once there was something
wrong with him. He was nervous and excited, and tried to put me off and
get rid of me by telling me to come to 172 Rhodes Street next week and he
would take insurance. But as the negro had excited my curiosity by his
incoherent, scattering way of talking and his nervous and excited manner,
I remained standing there firing questions at him.

He told me he was in trouble. I asked him if they had had him in jail or
the stockade. He said no, but he was expecting to be in jail, and that right
away. I asked him what for.

He said, "Murder, I killed a girl today."

I said: "Oh, I see! You are Jack the Ripper."

The thought that occurred to me was that he meant he had killed some
negro woman, and the only thing that seemed peculiar to me was that he
said "girl" instead of "woman."

I said: "Why did you kill her?"

He began to get angry and I saw he was drunk.

He said: "Now, that is for me to know and you to find out."

I did not attach much to what he was saying, thinking it was the bab-
bling of a drunken negro; but his restless, quick glancing around and his
keeping his eyes on me, and the wild, unnatural glare in his eyes caused me
to want to press him further to find out really what he had been doing.

I said: "Let me write your insurance this afternoon," and started down
to where he was.

He said: "Don't you come down here," speaking this in an angry, threat-
ening manner. This caused me to press him the more.

I said: "No, I will take your application now," and continued.

He said: "I tell you not to come down here."

When he saw I was coming on anyway, he jumped up, and as he went
round the corner of the house he said: "I have killed one today and I don't
want to kill another."

I said: "Well, one a day is enough; that is 365 a year," turned and walked
off.

Gripping as this account was, it, too, was problematic, undermined by
Mincey's spotty chronicle of his early attempts to alert the authorities to
Conley's confession. On the TUesday after the murder, he claimed he'd vis-
ited the factory only to find that no one would listen to him, and had left

SKIRMISHES 183

"thoroughly disgusted." Following the Negro's arrest, he maintained he'd
stopped by headquarters, where an officer whose name he couldn't remem-
ber had allowed him to question Jim, who denied meeting him. Finally, he
contended he'd mailed an anonymous letter to Dorsey informing him of
what Conley said and urging him to take action. Only when nothing hap-
pened, he added, had he contacted Rosser.

In sum, Mincey appeared to be both self-dramatizing and self-pitying, an
insight that didn't escape the state's lawyers. In response to the tale, Frank
Hooper declared: "I sincerely doubt if [the] Mincey affidavit will ever be
heard from as a seriously considered piece of evidence in the Phagan case.
The statement was undoubtedly made and sworn to, but the prosecution
will be able to disprove it if its signer is called as a witness."

Still, William H. Mincey had struck a nerve, and the prosecution couldn't
hide it. Not only did his affidavit force Dorsey to reinterrogate his star wit-
ness (conley in sweatbox again, raved the Georgian in a circus-type
banner), but it led to another outing for Jim, this time to Vine City. There,
Detectives Starnes and Campbell led the prisoner around the neighbor-
hood to see if anyone could recall seeing him in a tete-a-tete with Mincey
on the day of the crime. (No one could, although the factory's day watch-
man, E. F. Holloway, would soon confirm that Mincey had visited the plant
on the Tuesday after the murder.) Meanwhile, Dorsey's staff was said to be
tracking down acquaintances of Mincey for an assault on his credibility.

All in all, Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold had pulled off an impressive
feat. Leaving aside the myriad questions concerning methodology and
veracity, they had built a case against Jim Conley grounded in physical evi-
dence, supported by an eyewitness account and topped by a confession. At
the least, the lawyers insisted, their new evidence warranted a hearing, but
the prospect of receiving one was slim. In the history of Fulton County, not
only had no grand jury indicted a suspect against a solicitor's wishes, no
grand jury had met to consider such action against a solicitor's wishes. And
there was no doubt as to the wishes of this particular solicitor, who'd made
it plain from the outset that he'd fight any move aimed at undermining
Conley's effectiveness in court.

Yet despite Hugh Dorsey's opposition, if ever there was a moment in
which opposing counsel might persuade a grand jury to act against a solici-
tor's will, that moment was now. In early July, the term of the panel that had
indicted Frank had expired, and a new panel— whose twenty members had
not heard the prosecution's case— had taken its place. This group could
prove sympathetic to the argument that the evidence connecting the Negro
to the crime was stronger than the evidence on which Frank was indicted.

184 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Which was why even as Mincey's affidavit was dominating the papers,
Rosser and Arnold were lobbying the just-seated jurors to confound prece-
dent and take up the case against Conley.

Predictably, the Georgian spearheaded the campaign. By this date,
Hearst's sheet had largely abandoned objectivity, completing the process
that had started in mid-May when it began flirting with a pro-Frank stance.
As Herbert Asbury would recall in the American Mercury:

Although evidence was constantly piling up against [Frank], toward the
end we worked as hard trying to prove his innocence and build up senti-
ment for him and against the Negro, Jim Conley, who had confessed to
helping Frank hide the body, as we did to find legitimate news of the case.
The Constitution and the Journal turned more or less against Frank,
though never violently so, largely because the Georgian had taken the
opposite position.

Every Sunday, the Old Police Reporter— the Georgian's pseudonymous
man on the Phagan beat— weighed in either to attack the state's case or
build up the defense's. On July 6, he analyzed the evidence with an eye
toward highlighting all facts pointing toward Conley as the murderer.
According to his calculations, there were eighteen such facts. A week later,
he analyzed the same evidence looking for facts damning to Frank. Here,
however, he could come up with only three, each of which he dismissed as
sheer coincidence, whereupon he seized the opportunity to readdress the
facts against Conley, proclaiming:

If it can be shown to the Grand Jury that Conley did say to Mincey, "I
have killed one girl today, and do not wish to kill another," and that he
was in a half-drunken stupor when he said it, that, in connection with the
other evidence against Conley unquestionably would seem to make it
the present Grand Jury's positive DUTY to indict Conley, without further
ado!

In his next column, the Old Police Reporter argued that past history
notwithstanding, the grand jury was not answerable to the solicitor —was, in
truth, answerable only to itself:

It would be unusual for the Grand Jury to indict Conley with an indict-
ment already standing against Frank for the same offense. It would not be
an unheard-of thing, however.

Grand Juries are laws unto themselves. They may indict whom they
please and when they please.

SKIRMISHES 185

Indeed, the law and their oaths make it imperative that a Grand Jury
indict ALL persons they believe deserving of an indictment, regardless of
whether that indictment affects pending cases advantageously or disad-
vantageous^.

Relentless as the Georgian's propagandizing was, the defense did not
rely solely upon the paper in its efforts to influence the grand jury. Rosser
and Arnold knew where to apply pressure, and they did, sponsoring a
letter- writing campaign in which correspondents— many hiding behind the
cloak of anonymity— beseeched the grand jurors to take up the case against
Conley.

On July 18, W. D. Beatie— the realtor who'd been appointed foreman of
the newly empaneled grand jury— arrived at Dorsey's office and, in a move
that shocked the Atlanta bar, asked the solicitor to call the body into ses-
sion to consider the new evidence suggesting that Jim Conley had mur-
dered Mary Phagan. When Dorsey refused Beatie 's request, the foreman,
as the Constitution gravely recounted, "went over the head of the state's
legal representative in Fulton County" and ordered the jury to convene on
Monday, July 21, a week before Frank's trial was scheduled to begin. For
the solicitor, the defeat was the worst sort of affront, threatening his case
while flouting his authority. Afterward, all he could manage was a terse
statement:

The meeting's only purpose will be to exploit the evidence and embar-
rass the State, and I hope the Grand Jury when it meets will decide to leave
the matter alone.

The indictment of Conley at this time will be a useless procedure that
will not stop the trial of Frank.

Conley is in jail and is going to stay there for some time. He is where the
authorities can put their hands on him, and he can be indicted much more
properly after the Frank case has been disposed of than before, and by the
delay there is no danger of a miscarriage of justice.

Just two days would pass between Beatie's announcement and the con-
vening of the grand jury, making the fight for the jurors' loyalties as brief as
it was intense.

Sallying forth for the prosecution was William Smith. In a statement pub-
lished in the Constitution and Journal, Conley's lawyer, after alluding to "an
unseen force" that had bullied the jury into taking up the case, attempted to
reassure Atlantans as to his client's honesty while simultaneously hinting
darkly that it was the silent man in the Tower who'd been less than forth-
coming:

l86 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Jim Conley has been dealing fairly with the state of Georgia. His story
has been an open book to the sworn, trusted prosecuting officers of this
state. He is not skulking coward-like behind the protection of iron bars, nor
have his lips been sealed with tomb-like silence, until he can spring sud-
denly in a court a well-prepared statement, which the state has no oppor-
tunity to investigate and disprove. Conley allows himself to be grilled,
cross-examined and unceasingly questioned by the representatives of the
state. He is talking and talking now. Conley says to the state of Georgia,
here is my story, investigate it, sift it, and prove it a lie, if you can.

What more could the grand jury ask? Conley is giving the state a
square deal; Conley is remaining a voluntary prisoner, and no honest citi-
zen doubts that he will be held to account for his part in this terrible
tragedy.

Smith's duty to Conley discharged, he then praised Dorsey, painting a
picture of an independent prosecutor at war against the entrenched inter-
ests of capital and privilege:

If the grand jurors do not want to please Frank and his friends, if they do
not want to help clear Frank, they had better leave this alone, for the pres-
ent. The good people of this county elected Hugh Dorsey as the solicitor
general. Under the law, this makes him the legal adviser of the grand jury.
There is not a businessman on the grand jury that does not follow in his
own affairs the advice of the lawyer ... to whom he goes for counsel. Let
the grand jury do with the public business what they would do with their
own matters . . .

Does the grand jury think their legal judgement or their personal
integrity above that of our solicitor general, or do they doubt the profes-
sional or private character of Hugh Dorsey? The people of this county
know that Dorsey is straight; that in this case he is fighting brains, money
and influence. I know that he is standing by what he thinks right, and with
constant threats thrown at him that they will defeat him at the next elec-
tion and with every handicap thrown in his way in the discharge of his duty
in prosecuting a white man who has wealth and influence.

While Dorsey let Smith do his lobbying, Rosser and Arnold did their
own. In a joint statement published Sunday in all three papers, Frank's
lawyers again asserted that the solicitor possessed no authority to dictate
the grand jury's actions:

The Grand Jury is an independent body; it is under the control of no one.
A Solicitor General is the adviser of that body as to legal principles

SKIRMISHES 187

merely, but he has no right to exercise any sort of control in determining
who shall or shall not be indicted.

To permit a Solicitor General to use the position intrusted to him by the
people to decide for himself who shall not be indicted is a danger too great
to be contemplated.

With that, Rosser and Arnold accused Dorsey of prosecuting their client
merely for the "gratification of his professional pride," charged him with
withholding evidence and suggested that he had manipulated the previous
jury in such a way as to deny it access to Conley's affidavits prior to Frank's
indictment. Finally, after dismissing Smith's remarks ("It is appropriate that
he should bolster up the Solicitor, as he depends mightily upon the Solicitor
to protect his negro."), the lawyers warned the jurors that if they did not
indict Conley, the "community would resent the rank favoritism shown this
confessed criminal."

The atmosphere inside the Thrower Building conference room the Monday
morning the jurors convened to take up the case against Jim Conley was
explosive. As one reporter put it, not since the days immediately after Mary
Phagan's body was found had there been as much electricity in the air. With
eighteen jurors— just enough for a quorum— present, Foreman Beatie shut
the doors and Dorsey took the floor. The solicitor began by citing legal
precedents. Tbrning to the appropriate authority, he read:

The Solicitor General is to determine whether or not to commence a
particular prosecution, or to continue a particular prosecution or to dis-
continue one already begun. The Solicitor General draws the bill of indict-
ment and examines the witnesses, not with a view to the interest of any
client, but alone to subserve public justice.

The whole prosecution from the time the case is laid before him is
under his direction, supervision, and control.

Dorsey did not, however, stop here, proceeding to address the substance of
his case against Frank and the reasons why he believed Conley's indictment
would threaten it. After an hour on his feet, he sat down. Minutes later,
the jury voted not to indict Conley. Considering the fact that the panel
once again contained several Jews— among them Oscar Elsas, president
of the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill, which, not insignificantly, was a client
of Rosser 's firm— this was a stunning victory for the solicitor. When he
emerged shortly after noon, he could not resist chiding the defense for the
manner in which it had tried to go over his head:

l88 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

I am requested by the Grand Jury to say that no action will be taken at
this time on the James Conley matter, and that that body will not pay any
attention whatever to anonymous communications.

Thus this final pretrial skirmish ended in triumph for the state. Not sur-
prisingly, the defense attempted to downplay the defeat. Declared Reuben
Arnold: "It made absolutely no difference to us. It was purely a technical
point that would have been in our favor." But such soft-pedaling could not
hide the magnitude of the loss.

During the remaining few days before court convened, the inevitable
parrying and thrusting continued, shifting the advantage to the defense
here, the prosecution there. Boding well for Frank was Chief Lanford's
announcement that one of the state's most anticipated witnesses— Nina
Formby, the madam who'd charged that Frank had phoned her on April 26
seeking a room— would not testify. According to the newspapers, the police
no longer placed any credence in the woman's story. Meantime, the prose-
cution received a boost when Reuben Arnold made the mistake of asking
the judge assembling the panels from which the Frank jurors would be
drawn to select those panels not from the vast pool of petit jurors to which
all registered voters belonged but from the smaller pool of grand jurors
comprised of Atlanta's most inflential citizens. The judge not only rejected
the request, but Dorsey seized upon it, branding the defense both elitist and
desperate.

Such exchanges, however, were now the exception. The season of con-
tentious preparation had ended. All was in readiness, and all eyes focused
on the cells where the antagonists awaited.

At the Tower, Leo Frank, as he'd done almost from the first days of
his incarceration, surrounded himself with friends and business associates.
The afternoon before court convened, Frank's wife, his mother (who'd
just arrived from New York), his friend Julian Boehm and a dozen other
well-wishers gathered. Lucille brought hors d'oeuvres and fresh Georgia
peaches and the mood was confident, reassuring. Had it not been for the
surroundings, it would have been hard to imagine that the guest of honor
would the next morning go on trial for his life.

Meanwhile, several blocks to the west at the headquarters lockup, Jim
Conley was readying himself in quite a different way. Since late June, Con-
ley had been participating in a series of late-night tutorials that would come
to be known as the "midnight seances." These sessions were divided into
separate sections— one focusing on the content of the Negro's upcoming
testimony, the other on the delivery. The faculty charged with ironing out

SKIRMISHES 189

the substance of Jim's stories included Detectives Black, Starnes and Scott,
Chief Lanford and Dorsey.

When it came to public speaking, however, Conley had but one instruc-
tor: William Smith. Over many long evenings, the lawyer edified his pupil on
the rules of discourse, stressing the importance of enunciation, timing and
maintaining eye contact with an audience. Then Smith, a fair mimic, gave
the Negro a taste of Luther Rosser's corrosive manner, preparing him for
the inevitable courtroom encounter. On the eve of the trial, Smith was
breathing the heritage and fire of the South's oratorical tradition into this
unlikeliest of Negro students. Not that the lawyer would have phrased it so
grandly. Years later, describing what he'd hoped to accomplish, he bluntly
stated: "to render Conley impervious to cross-examination."

TEN

And so July 28 came— hot, with high clouds and the temperature ris-
ing. Outside the redbrick pile of the old Atlanta City Hall this Mon-
day morning, the crowd was so thick that the intersection of Pryor
and Hunter was nearly impassable. Trolley cars could make the turn only
with a squealing of brakes and clanging of bells. Yet for all its number, the
throng was orderly and quiet, its members content simply to gaze at the
windows behind which the great battle would now transpire.

Inside, the mood, depending on one's location, fluctuated wildly. In a
vestibule just off the second-floor courtroom, Leo Frank paced back and
forth, flicking a rolled-up newspaper at the furniture. To avoid the crush of
curiosity seekers, Frank had been whisked into the building at 7:30. Since
arriving, he'd made a brief statement predicting his acquittal to a reporter,
then devoured the breakfast his brother-in-law Charles Ursenbach had
brought him. Around 9:15, his wife and mother appeared. At the sight of
the women, Frank smiled and raised his hands, and there followed a series
of embraces. After Lucille took her husband in her arms, kissing him and
fondling his hair, his mother grabbed his chin and shook it as if to say he
couldn't lose. The gesture elicited a confident laugh from Frank, yet nothing
appeared to truly ease his mind. Noted the Journal: "Hardly once during
this morning did Frank sit down."

Up on the third floor in the rooms— one for whites, the other for
Negroes— set aside for witnesses, there was also little sitting, but not due
to any anxiety on the part of those assembled. To most of the 120-some peo-
ple whose testimony would determine Frank's fate, this was a holiday.
With what amounted to the entire workforce of the National Pencil Com-
pany subpoenaed, the halls were packed with blushing girls in summer
dresses. Young male employees lounged in the doorways, smoking ciga-
rettes. Though some of those summoned evinced a sober mien, giddiness
prevailed. Observed the Journal: "The men and girls [were] laughing and
chatting as if they were at a pleasure party. There is none of the morbid
curiosity of the street crowd here."

In the courtroom itself, a refreshed-looking Judge Leonard Roan sat in
his high-backed leather chair behind the bench exchanging pleasantries

PROSECUTION 191

with the opposing counsel. At the defense table, Luther Rosser and Reuben
Arnold, both in white linen suits, were the picture of patrician Southern
lawyers even if Rosser, true to form, had forsaken neckwear. Hugh Dorsey,
however, was not so elegantly turned out. From his blue cotton suit to his
black brogans, the solicitor was every inch the people's advocate. What
these sartorial differences suggested, sheer numbers reinforced. Swirling
around Rosser and Arnold was an army of legal talent the likes of which the
Atlanta courts had rarely seen. All told, the defense employed eight attor-
neys—among them Herbert Haas, of counsel to the pencil factory; Rosser 's
partner Stiles Hopkins, son of the president of Emory College; Rosser's
son, Luther Jr.; and Oscar Simmons and Paul Goss, engaged solely to assist
in picking a jury and carrying notebooks crammed with information to help
them do so. Against this silk-stockinged legion stood Dorsey, his associate
Frank Hooper, Assistant Solicitor Ed Stephens, William Smith— who was
present not only in his capacity as Jim Conley's lawyer but as Dorsey's jury
consultant— and office clerk Newt Garner, who lugged the guts of the
state's case in two beat-up valises. Also sitting at the prosecution table,
looking uncomfortable in his Sunday best, was a final interested party, Mary
Phagan's stepfather, John W. Coleman.

The room in which the trial would take place had formerly been used for
city council meetings. Hanging from the pressed tin ceiling, the clustered
globes of a dozen electric chandeliers cast a soft glow throughout. Bisecting
the hall laterally, a row of fluted columns formed a boundary between the
gallery and the field of battle. These reminders of civic grandeur were
not, however, what initially caught the eye. Perched at intervals along the
room's horseshoe-shaped rail were six ozonators, precursors of the air con-
ditioner. The machines reoxygenated the chamber and, in combination with
the electric fans that were bolted everywhere to the walls, were expected to
blunt the crushing heat. Confidence in the devices was such that exterior
windows were shut. The Georgian predicted that the courtroom "probably
will be the coolest and best ventilated place in Atlanta."

Yet despite its antiquated charm and innovative preparations, the old
city hall facility was sorely lacking in one regard: size. Inside the tiny arena,
the principals found themselves sitting in ladder-back chairs jammed prac-
tically on top of one another. The teams of opposing lawyers were barely an
arm's length apart. The court reporters squatted on the lip of the podium
supporting the judge's bench, their notebooks balanced on their knees,
their feet braced against the witness stand. The press was consigned to a
cramped table in a corner piled high with copy paper and contiguous to the
jury box. Meanwhile, the 250-seat spectator section— today filled chiefly by
prospective jurors— tightly embraced the room on three sides, creating a
fishbowl effect.

192 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

At precisely 9:58 a.m., following an hour given over to the impaneling of
the veniremen, Dorsey announced the case of the State versus Leo M. Frank
for the murder of Mary Phagan, whereupon the swearing of witnesses—
a procedure that in Georgia in 1913 was conducted at the opening of a
trial— commenced. After the solicitor called his list, bailiffs escorted the
men and women upon whose testimony the prosecution would rely to the
bench, and the familiar do-you-solemnlies reverberated through the cham-
ber. What occurred next, however, was unexpected.

Approaching the bench, Rosser and Arnold stunned the courtroom by
asking Judge Roan for a special dispensation to swear their witnesses at a
later hour. The defense list, they maintained, was as yet fragmentary, and to
complete it this morning would occasion a long delay. Immediately, Dorsey
was on his feet, protesting that it would be unfair to the state if opposing
counsel was so indulged. Judge Roan agreed with the solicitor, rejecting the
request but granting Frank's lawyers unlimited time to prepare, which, as it
turned out, was no time at all.

Within an embarrassingly brief five minutes, Rosser and Arnold had
fleshed out their list, and as Stiles Hopkins began to call the names, it
instantly became clear why they had been loath to show their hand: They
were contemplating the risky tack of introducing Frank's character as a
part of their case. There was no other way to explain the scores of Atlanta
Jews who had been summoned. Nor was there any other way to account for
a delegation of Cornell faculty members and graduates from Ithaca and
elsewhere in the North. Plainly, this list of well over one hundred names was
more than just a list— it was a theory of the defense, one that carried with it
the prospect that in rebuttal, the state could introduce witnesses to testify
to Frank's bad reputation.

Hence before a word of testimony was uttered, the defense had suffered
a tactical setback, although the damage was mitigated by the fact that the
prosecution did not emerge from the process unscathed. Aside from Jim
Conley, whom Dorsey had pointedly not called because he wanted to keep
him at headquarters until the last instant, Albert and Minola McKnight
were the state's most sensational witnesses. Their story of what allegedly
transpired in the Selig home on April 26 destroyed Frank's alibi. Yet as
nearly everyone in the courtroom noticed, when the clerk invoked Albert's
name, no one answered. Bailiffs were quickly dispatched to search for the
wayward Negro, but if his wife's disposition was any indication, his absence
may have been a blessing to the prosecution. After Minola was sworn, she
again disavowed her notorious affidavit.

Emotions in the little courtroom were still mildly atingle from these
developments when Leo Frank, his wife and his mother made their entries.
For Frank, this was his first public appearance since the coroner's inquest

PROSECUTION 193

two and a half months earlier. Before he reached the defense table, he was
surrounded by friends. The outpouring of affection was so intense that for
several minutes the proceedings ground to a halt, giving the reporters at the
press table the chance to scribble madly. To one of the Georgian's men, the
factory superintendent was the image of poise:

If there was any fear in the heart of the young prisoner, it did not show
in his calm features. He seemed perfectly assured and self-possessed.

Yet to a Constitution writer, he seemed overwhelmed:

Frank looked quickly about him as he came into the crowded room. He
appeared, as a person frequently is, unable to take in all at once the scene.
As he made out the straining faces and searching eyes, it seemed to dawn
upon him that he was the man for whom the crowd had gathered and at
whom all eyes were turned. His expression seemed to indicate that he was
telling himself, "It's my appearance that has brought this stir and what can
these people be thinking about me?"

Whatever the disagreement regarding Frank's state of mind, there was
accord regarding his attire, which the Georgian termed "natty." For this
momentous day, he had chosen a light gray mohair suit set off by charcoal
pin stripes and a "fancy" black-and-white tie. The look was dignified but
hardly reserved. Lucille, too, was sober yet stylish. Black hat trimmed in
black chiffon and netted by a pulled-back veil, black suit smartly tailored,
beribboned black-and-white watch fob peeking out from a white silk waist,
she was the definition of understated refinement. The couple made a strik-
ing impression. No one else in the chamber was so well dressed.

Once the Franks took their seats in a tight semicircle of chairs that linked
the defense table to their right with the judge's bench to their left and
looked directly across the packed courtroom at the jury box, order was
restored, and the voir dire began.

One panel at a time, the veniremen filed into the box, and to each group,
Hugh Dorsey posed the same carefully worded questions to determine
whether any preconception as to guilt or innocence existed. Many of the
potential jurors admitted outright to a prejudice, disqualifying themselves.
Others, however, were not so forthcoming.

When a master plumber named A. F. Bellingrath confidently swore that
he possessed an open mind regarding Frank, Reuben Arnold, who spoke
for the defense throughout this process, consulted the notebooks prepared
by Simmons and Goss.Then he was on his feet.

"Haven't you formed an opinion from reading the newspapers and

194 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

haven't you expressed your opinion to the effect that Frank is guilty?"
Arnold asked. "Didn't you express such an opinion in the presence of Mr.
Brent?"

Confronted with this incident, Bellingrath allowed that he had said it
"looked that way," and Judge Roan announced: "I think he should be set
aside for his own sake."

Yet for every venireman shown to be leaning against Frank, there
seemed to be another partial to him, as Dorsey demonstrated during his
questioning of a shoe salesman named W. W. Hemmett.

"Haven't you recently expressed an opinion that Frank is innocent and
Conley is guilty?" the solictor asked Hemmett.

"No, I never have," Hemmett answered, whereupon Dorsey referred to
notes furnished by William Smith, then reminded the prospective juror of a
"certain talk he had with acquaintances," forcing him to admit that he had
indeed said he would need to hear some pretty good evidence before he'd
convict Frank. With no further ado, Roan rejected the man.

Thus were dozens of potential jurors found wanting. During these vol-
leys, the Franks could not have responded more differently. Throughout the
morning, Lucille seldom removed her gaze from the solicitor's face. Anger
appeared to blaze from her eyes and seeming scorn curled her lips. Con-
versely, Leo was utterly engrossed in the process. When a new panel was
brought in, he looked intently into the face of each man, beginning at the
upper row and shifting his gaze from one to another until he had scruti-
nized them all. Like the engineer that he was, Frank was calculating angles
and dynamics, attempting to identify in bone structure or expression the
torque of latent hostility.

For both the prosecution and the defense, there was, of course, a final
recourse should a venireman whom either side found objectionable survive
the initial questioning. Each camp was allotted twenty preemptory strikes,
and it was with an eye toward advising his counsel when to exercise the pre-
rogative that Frank studied physiognomies. As the Georgian observed:

Not infrequently, when the Solicitor had closed his examination and
had said, "Juror, look on prisoner; prisoner, look on juror," Frank would
turn to Attorney Arnold and an instant later the announcement would be
made, "Struck by the defense." Frank evidently was playing a large part in
the striking of jurors.

In contrast, Dorsey based his decisions on more objective criteria—
striking, for instance, all veniremen opposed to capital punishment. Addi-
tionally, the solicitor chose not to strike any of the Negroes on the panels.

PROSECUTION 195

Hence when Earl Davis and E. E. Hawkins took their spots in the jury
box— a place that blacks occasionally ended up in because, though barred
from the all-important Democratic primary, they were allowed to vote in
the usually meaningless general election and were thus eligible for jury
duty— Dorsey accorded them his blessing, forcing the defense to expend
two of its strikes or else find itself in the unenviable position of having to
persuade an integrated jury that Jim Conley was a liar.

Of the twelve veniremen who composed the first panel, all were dismissed.
The fourth, sixth and seventh panels also failed to yield a single juror. Yet the
slow start notwithstanding, the process would not be unduly long. According
to one observer, a majority of the candidates had "weighed the gravity of
the situation" and were "prompt and intelligent" in answering their inter-
rogators' queries. At 11:20, the first juror— Atticus H. Henslee, a traveling
salesman with the Franklin Buggy Company of Barnesville, Georgia— was
selected, and from that point forth, the group fell into place. By 1:25, when
court recessed for lunch, the task was finished. In addition to Henslee, the
body that would sit in judgment of Frank included F. V.L. Smith, an electrical
manufacturing rep; Monroe S. Woodward, a salesman at King's Hardware;
Deder Townsend, a bank teller; J. F. Higdon, a contractor; Marcellus Johen-
ning, a shop foreman; F. L. Wisbey, a cashier; Fred Winburn, a railroad freight
agent; XT. Ozburn, an optician; W. S. Metcalf, a circulation clerk at the Geor-
gian; W. M. Jeffries, a realtor; and Charles Bosshardt, a pressman at the Foote
& Davies printing firm. Eleven of the men were married— one for just a few
weeks — and five were fathers. For their trouble, each would earn $2 a day. All
would be sequestered at the Kimball House for the duration.

Predictably, the boys at the press table knocked themselves out trying to
size up the jurors. Commented a Constitution reporter:

Of the many juries called upon to serve in famous cases in Fulton
County, none has classed higher in intellectual fitness or physical appear-
ance than the men who make up the Frank jury. For the most part the jury
is composed of young men this side of 40— men who have the appearance
of having succeeded in life and who give promise of still greater success.

Considering the jurors' occupations, this analysis seems inflated. Yet even
the defense's fiercest champion, the Georgian's James B. Nevin, gave the
group high marks:

The jury apparently is much above the average— it was plain enough all
along that the defense was seeking a jury of high intelligence, and a city
jury, moreover.

I96 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

When court reconvened Monday afternoon, Hugh Dorsey called Mrs. Fan-
nie Coleman. In her black hat and veil, the victim's mother could not have
made a more piteous first witness:

"When did you last see Mary Phagan alive?" the solicitor began.

"On the morning of April 26, at my home."

"When did she get up, and when did she have breakfast?"

"She got up about 11:00 and had breakfast right afterwards."

"What did she eat?"

"She ate some cabbage and some bread."

"What time did she leave home?"

"About a quarter to 12:00."

Despite its restraint, Dorsey 's catechism was leading to an operatic pass, for
as he was conducting it, his clerk was standing in front of the witness stand,
laying out the items that in a matter of speaking would reincarnate the vic-
tim and evoke her horrible demise.

The clothes Mary Phagan had been wearing when Newt Lee found her
body in the National Pencil Company basement made a heartrending dis-
play: bloodstained dress, torn hose, scuffed pumps, battered straw hat. At
the sight, Mrs. Coleman broke down and sank back in her chair, her face
hidden by a large palm-leaf fan. After the officer in charge of courtroom
security fetched the poor woman a glass of water, she collected herself, but
not for long. The grim tableau was too much to bear, and not just for her.
Observed the Journal: "Many spectators in court were affected. Mrs. Frank,
mother of the accused, put her own hand before her face and bowed her
head." Evidently, however, Leo Frank's response was not so empathetic. As
the Constitution acidly noted:

During [Mrs. Coleman's] mental suffering, Frank carefully kept his eyes
away from her, although he sat facing her and the jury. He seemed either
unwilling or unable to view the mother's grief.

For the state, the case could not have opened more perfectly. Understand-
ing that a mother's tears spoke louder than words, Dorsey promptly ended
his examination, thereby appearing the soul of consideration but in reality
putting the defense in a bad spot. At this juncture, the last words Frank's
lawyers wanted to hear were: "The witness is with you."

When Luther Rosser approached the stand, Mrs. Coleman was still crying.
The lawyer started his cross-examination in as kindly a way as possible. He

PROSECUTION 197

inquired softly if "Miss Mary's hat" appeared as it had on the morning of
April 26. No, Mrs. Coleman replied. On that Saturday, it had been adorned
with a ribbon and red flowers. Then he asked if Mrs. Coleman had actually
observed her daughter board the streetcar to town. Again, she replied no. The
stop was at a little store two blocks from their home. Gingerly, Rosser had
succeeded in touching on a vital defense assertion— that the victim had been
robbed of items Frank simply would not have taken— while also casting
doubt on the state's murder-day timetable, which to work as Dorsey intended
had to begin at 1 1 45. Yet for all the lawyer's care, he'd reached his limit:

"Do you know a boy named Epps?" he asked, referring to young
George, the newsie who'd told the coroner's inquest that Mary confided to
him that Frank had made lascivious remarks to her.

"Yes."

"Was he a friend of Miss Mary's?"

"Yes, to a certain extent, he was."

"Did you not talk to a certain gentleman on May 3 . . ."

Before Rosser could complete the question, Dorsey was on his feet, object-
ing. The solicitor knew that on May 3, Mrs. Coleman had told Pinkerton
detective L. P. Whitfield that her daughter "detested" Epps. Since Dorsey
intended to call the boy, he had no intention of letting his opponent continue
in this vein, although for the court's consumption, he argued that Rosser's
line of inquiry was immaterial unless he was trying to impeach Mrs. Coleman.
In response, the defense lawyer denied that he was trying to impeach anyone
and twice attempted to rephrase the question, but each time, Judge Roan sus-
tained Dorsey's objection, leaving Rosser no choice but to quit the field.

From the instant the state's second witness, the aforementioned George
Epps, bounded to the stand, the pall that just moments before had hung
over the courtroom lifted. Not only was the fifteen-year-old barefoot, but
his shiny noggin looked, in one reporter's words, "as though a barber had
passed a razor across it that very day."

Epps's testimony was not as Tom Sawyerish as his appearance. At least
not initially. Under Hugh Dorsey's examination, he gave a straightforward
account of his April 26 activities, swearing that he'd been on the English
Avenue car when Mary Phagan boarded that morning at 1 1:50 and that the
two had ridden to town together. At 12:07, he claimed, they'd disembarked
at the corner of Marietta and Forsyth streets. After promising to meet him
at 3:00 to watch the Confederate Memorial Day parade, Mary, the boy said,
had walked south on Forsyth to the pencil factory to pick up her wages.

I98 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

In essence, this was the narrative Epps had told the coroner's jury. How-
ever, he wouldn't be allowed to address the subject that had shocked the
inquest, for when Dorsey posed his next question, the one everyone was
awaiting, Rosser fiercely objected, prompting the solicitor to withdraw it
and sit down. Consequently, Dorsey 's final query— "What did she say to
you on the car in reference to L. M. Frank?"— hung in the air unanswered,
floating on the periphery of the jurors' consciousness, either a bomb that
hadn't exploded or a bubble that should have been pricked.

Yet the substance of Epps's testimony was ultimately of less import to
the state than his ability to provide a needed comic interlude, one that came
during the defense's cross-examination and at Rosser's expense, for true to
his looks, young George was a hayseed jester capable of turning an over-
bearing lawyer's queries into unintended straight lines:

"How did you know what time it was when Mary Phagan joined you
going downtown that morning?" Rosser began.

"I looked at a clock just before I took the car," Epps replied.

"You didn't say anything about a clock when you testified before the
coroner's jury."

"Nope, but I looked at one just the same."

"How did you know what time it was when Miss Mary left you?"

"I estimated it from the time she got on the car, and I told it by the sun.
I can tell time by the sun." This, with evident pride.

"You can tell the time to within seven minutes by the sun, then?"

"Yes, sir, I can," came back a childish treble.

"Did Mary get off the car with you?"

"Yes, sir."

"You went to sell your papers then?"

"Yes, sir. I thought I could sell them by 3:00 and meet her as she had
agreed with me to do."

"Had you sold out by 4:00?"

"No, sir, I finished sellin' out at the ball grounds."

"What time was it when you finished selling your papers?" Rosser was
plainly baiting a trap.

"I don't know, sir," Epps replied.

Sensing his quarry's obliviousness, Rosser pounced: "Couldn't you tell
by the sun?"

"No sir, the sun had went down by that time," Epps retorted brightly,
not only escaping, but winning over the courtroom.

Observed the Constitution: "The positive way in which little Epps replied,
and the stress upon the 'had went' caused a general ripple of laughter." This

PROSECUTION 199

mirthful wave had yet to diminish when, a second later, Epps, having
tweaked the nose of Atlanta's legal Goliath, was excused.

Shortly after Monday's final witness, Newt Lee, took the stand, the pro-
ceedings were interrupted by an explosion of flash powder from the south
side of the gallery, behind the press table, where half a dozen photographers
were set up. The cameramen had been patiently waiting for the right shot,
and now that it had come— Dorsey on his feet, hands in pockets, facing old
Newt; Frank, arms folded across his lap, gazing impassively upon the jurors;
reporters nibbling pencils; spectators leaning in— they opened their lenses.
The resulting images would be stripped across the next day's front pages.
These pictures, however, did more than freeze a moment. Their taking
marked the end of the trial's first-day fanfare and the onset of genuine hos-
tilities. Prior to this disruption, Dorsey had been merely setting the stage.
Yes, Fannie Coleman and George Epps had caused a stir, but aside from
enabling the solicitor to establish the contents of Mary's last meal and the
approximate time she'd left for town, they'd failed to contribute anything
substantive. From this point forth, the state's deponents would be capable
of delivering testimony that if not refuted could spell doom for Leo Frank.

While little of what Newt Lee had to say was actually new, he would
make a forceful witness. In part, his tale simply continued to fascinate.
Of equal importance, however, was his attitude. At once humble yet revel-
ing in the fact that as he sat on the stand in his store-bought suit, "dem
big lawyers," as the Georgian phrased it, "was pay[ing] him respecks," the
Negro cut an engaging figure, one Hugh Dorsey knew exactly how to exploit.

After quickly establishing Lee's presence at the factory at 4:00 on the
afternoon of the crime and the fact that on the previous day, Frank had
specifically instructed him to arrive at that hour, the solicitor went to work:

"When you appeared at the factory to report on afternoons what did
you generally do upon going up to the second floor where Mr. Frank's
office is situated?"

"Say, 'Howdy, Mr. Frank.' He usually called, 'Hello, Newt,' and if he
wants anything he calls me into his office."

"What did he do when you went to the second floor on Saturday,
the 26th?"

"He came to the door, rubbing his hands and saying he was sorry I had
come so early. I told him I needed sleep and was sorry, too. He said go out
in town and have a good time because I needed it."

"Could you have slept in the factory?"

"Yes sir. In the packing room."

200 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Having completed one station of the cross, Dorsey directed Lee to the
others. Regarding a topic he intended to make a major issue— the alleged
skips in Lee's April 26 time slip— the solicitor's questions revealed that he
suspected Frank of setting the Negro up from the outset:

"What did Frank say when you came back?"

"I went to the door and told him I was back, and he says, 'What time is
it?' And I says, 'It lacks two minutes of 6:oo.' He says, 'Don't punch yet,
there is a few worked today and I want to change the slip.' "

"What did he do then?"

"Put in a slip for the time clock. It took him twice as long this time than
it did the other times I saw him fix it. He fumbled putting it in while I held
the lever for him and I think he made some remark about he was not used
to putting it in."

From here, Dorsey danced Lee through the rest of the familiar narrative.
Once again, Newt related how Frank had "jumped back frightened" upon
meeting James M. Gantt on the sidewalk. Once again, he delivered the
parable of the shoes, which began with Frank informing Gantt that his two
pairs had been swept out and ended with Gantt, upon entering the plant,
easily finding them. And once again, he told of Frank phoning at 7:00 to ask
if things were all right, reasserting that the superintendent had never called
before.

At this juncture, Dorsey was ready to elicit Lee's account of the discov-
ery of the body, but before introducing the topic, he wanted to make certain
that the Negro and, more important, the jurors could visualize the crime
scene, which was why he unveiled a diagram of the pencil factory drawn for
him by the Georgian's Bert Green, hanging it on a wall to the judge's right
where all concerned could see.

An elaborate poster-sized production, the illustration was a showstop-
per. And no wonder. During the celebrated Harry Thaw trial in 1907,
Green, a New York Journal alumnus, had dazzled Manhattan with his depic-
tions of murder victim Stanford White's apartment. For Dorsey, Green had
created something just as provocative. The work's centerpiece was a cut-
away rendering of the pencil factory picturing everything from Frank's
office at the front of the structure to Mary Phagan's workstation at the rear
to the now infamous elevator shaft, lobby scuttle hole and basement toilet
from which Lee said he'd spied the body. Overlaying this architectural
skeleton were three dotted lines in different colors, one charting dimen-
sions, the other two— as a key at bottom left explained in no uncertain
terms— representing paths "the accused" had traversed while committing
the crime. Located at critical junctures along these black, red and green

PROSECUTION 201

route markings were scarlet pinpoints and Maltese crosses that, as the key
also helpfully explained, denoted such areas of interest as where blood had
been discovered or "where Girl was murdered on Office Floor." As a final
touch, several close-up photographs of details like the sliding basement
door and a previously unmentioned lock on a metal-room door had been
attached to the sketch's borders, lending both gloss and credibility to the
whole.

The "Diagram of Phagan Murder— Venable Building" (as Green had
labeled it) gave the state a potent piece of graphic firepower, and Dorsey
wasted no time guiding Lee through it. The Negro indicated various sec-
tions of the building he'd entered while making his rounds the Saturday
night of the murder and reiterated that the gas jet in the basement had been
burning no brighter than a "lightning bug." Proud of his analogy, Lee elabo-
rated: "Has you ever seed one whut's been hit with a stick? Hit jest do
shine. Well, dat was dat light. Hit just was shinin', and dat's all." Then, he
pointed out where he'd found the victim.

The factory tour complete, Dorsey steered Lee back to the topic of
Frank. First, he brought up the matter of Newt's predawn effort to call his
boss, eliciting the news that the telephone had rung eight minutes without
anyone picking up. Next, he introduced Lee's Sunday-morning encounter
with Frank, touching once more upon the time clock and securing testimony
contradicting the superintendent's subsequent assessment that Newt's slip
had been incorrectly punched:

"When did you see Frank?"

"I saw Mr. Frank Sunday morning at about 7:00 or 8:00. He was coming
in the office."

"How did he look at you?"

"He looked down on the floor and never spoke to me. He dropped his
head down this way."

"Was any examination made of the time clock?"

"Boots Rogers, Chief Lanford, Darley, Mr. Frank and I were there when
they opened the clock. Mr. Frank opened the clock and said the punches
were all right."

"What did he mean by all right?" To this, Rosser objected, but Roan
overruled him, allowing Lee to answer.

"Meant that I hadn't missed any punches."

Finally, Dorsey asked Lee about his much debated late-night meeting with
Frank at the police lockup on April 29, giving the Negro the chance to
repeat his version of the encounter, which ended, of course, with Frank,
exasperated by Lee's denials of involvement, cautioning: "If you keep

202 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

that up, we will both go to hell." The solicitor could not have scripted a bet-
ter exit line.

Luther Rosser's attempt to undo the damage Lee had done to Frank would
not be entirely ineffective. During the first hours of a cross-examination
that would spill over into the next day, the lawyer managed to extract a
good deal of helpful testimony. As in the course of Dorsey's examination,
much of what Lee had to say— his acknowledgment, for instance, that
Frank, having just fired Gantt, had an innocent reason to be flustered by the
man's appearance at the factory on April 26— merely restated information
he'd revealed at the inquest. But Rosser also succeeded in eliciting several
new tidbits that boded well for his client. On the afternoon of the murder,
Newt told the lawyer, anyone could have entered or exited "that great
big old rambling" building without Frank knowing. Then there was Lee's
admission that Frank, unlike someone with something to hide, had not
instructed him to avoid the basement during his rounds. In fact, the Negro
confided that had he gone into the cellar every half hour as Frank expected
rather than only occasionally, he'd have found the body sooner. And then
there was Lee's insistence that he saw nothing out of place in the metal
room during his passes through it that night.

Yet such successes notwithstanding, Rosser's approach to Lee seemed
unproductively disputatious. He contested, for instance, the wording of his
assertion that on the afternoon of the murder Frank had told him to go out
and have "a good time," suggesting that what Frank had actually said was to
go out and have "fun." Similarly, he took issue with his vivid lightning bug
analogy, and during a particularly nasty string of questions— each beginning
"How many times" and all implying that Newt had related his story so often
he'd become confused— he came close to flat-out badgering the witness. In
fact, when Lee at last cried, "I don't know, sir; there were so many blim-
blamming at me so much that I couldn't keep count," he appeared to be
accusing the lawyer of the same behavior. This, however, was just the start.

Rosser's Tiiesday morning cross-examination of Lee would take only two
hours, but in that brief span he would have at the Negro with a vengeance.
The interrogation, a Georgian reporter would later note, "reminded me
much of a big mastiff worrying and teasing a huge brown rat grimly bent
eventually upon the rat's utter annihilation." Yet for all Rosser's forceful-
ness, this second round of questioning would reveal more about the lawyer
than Lee, begetting doubts regarding not just his approach to Negro wit-
nesses but the defense's theory of the crime.

PROSECUTION 203

Everything about Rosser's treatment of Lee was intended to intimidate
him. Rosser began by asking about the events leading up to the discovery of
Mary Phagan's body, honing in on the disparity between the Negro's claim
that the girl was lying on her back and the responding officers' contention
that she was stomach down. This was hardly a topic dear to Lee's heart,
for it reintroduced one of the circumstances that had originally cast suspi-
cion on him, but he met it head-on, explaining that by "back" he'd meant
"side." Newt and the police had apparently seen the same thing. Not having
broached this matter to obtain information favorable to Lee, Rosser
changed the subject.

"You said yesterday that Mr. Frank jumped back when he met Mr.
Gantt?"

"Yes sir."

Here, Rosser picked up a copy of the inquest transcript from the defense
table and read aloud from Lee's testimony. The Negro had not mentioned
Frank "jumping back."

"Well, they got that wrong," Newt exclaimed when the recitation ended,
sending a buzz through the courtroom but providing Rosser with an open-
ing he couldn't resist.

"That was a bad stenographer down there, wasn't he?"

At this, Hugh Dorsey objected. Rosser, however, was in no mood to be
corrected by his younger counterpart, snapping: "Of course, this gentleman
on account of his age is entitled to lecture me."

Judge Roan, seeking to appease both parties, ruled that as long as Rosser
did not ask Lee to express opinions, he could question him about any incon-
sistencies between his remarks to the coroner's jury and his trial testimony.
Yet before Rosser could get going again, Dorsey's associate Frank Hooper
set the pot back to boiling by requesting that Frank's lawyer specify the ses-
sion of the inquest to which he was referring. The body had convened three
times to discuss the Phagan murder.

"I am always glad to accommodate these men whenever I can," Rosser
responded airily.

To which Hooper retorted: "You have got to accommodate me."

Whereupon Rosser exploded, "No, I haven't. The man never was born
whom I have got to accommodate."

Despite Rosser's outburst, Judge Roan ordered him to comply with the
state's request— not that this changed anything.

Resuming his threatening stance before Lee, Rosser took up another dis-
crepancy between the witness's direct testimony and his statements at the
inquest. "You said yesterday," he began, "that when Frank put on the clock
tape that Saturday it took twice as long as it did the other times you saw him
do it. Why didn't you tell the coroner it took twice as long as it did before?"

204 AN D TH E DEAD SHALL RISE

"I did tell them it took longer."

"Then all this record here is wrong?" Rosser asked incredulously, hold-
ing up his copy of the transcript.

"I can't help about those records," Newt shot back, sending yet another
quiver through the gallery.

If Luther Rosser had never met a white man he would accommodate,
he'd surely never met a Negro he was going to let best him, and he wasted no
time putting this one in his place, firing off a round of questions implying—
no matter how irrelevantly —that Lee, prior to his arrest, had been shacked
up with the woman who cooked for him. Though Newt denied the charge,
his response was beside the point. The insinuation had been made.

Satisfied that he had gotten to Lee, Rosser took up the topic that had
increased early suspicions against him.

"Were you down in the basement when the police found some notes?"

"They said something about a book."

"They read you something about the night watch doing it?"

Before Newt could answer, Dorsey objected. His grounds were proce-
dural. The murder notes had yet to be introduced into evidence and were
thus off-limits. Ridiculous, Rosser replied, and began to state his reasoning,
whereupon Dorsey asked the judge to withdraw the jury. Roan so ordered,
paving the way for a series of arguments by Frank's lawyers that not only
presented their rationale and explained Rosser's treatment of Lee but sug-
gested they were blindly rolling the dice.

After Dorsey produced the murder notes, Reuben Arnold introduced
the defense's intentions:

The defense expects to show that the two notes found in the basement
of the National Pencil Company were very obscure notes and the police
were trying to read them in the presence of Lee.

They read this one: "He said he wood love me laid down played like the
night witch did it but that long tall negro did buy his self."

In an instant, Lee said, "That night witch means me." It showed famil-
iarity with the notes. Isn't it strange that a negro so ignorant and dull that
Mr. Rosser had to ask him a question ten times over could in a flash inter-
pret this illegible scrawl?

More explicitly, Luther Rosser added:

We've got to commence somewhere and at some time to show the
negro is a criminal and we might as well begin here as anywhere else.

PROSECUTION 205

In other words, the defense hoped to establish that Lee was involved in
Mary Phagan's murder, specifically, that he was somehow connected to the
murder notes. Though Rosser did not elaborate further, the Georgian
reported that Frank's lawyers were laying "the groundwork for their theory
that Jim Conley was the murderer of Mary Phagan and that Lee assisted in
writing the notes."

Not surprisingly, Hugh Dorsey scoffed at the defense's logic, but after
pondering it all, Roan ruled that Rosser could continue, and the jury was
returned.

Considering the build-up, what now occurred was not only anticlimactic
but revealed that the defense hadn't thought its gambit through.

"When he said 'the night witch,' didn't you say, 'Boss, that's me?' "
Rosser resumed.

"No, sir," Newt answered. "I said, 'Boss, it looks like they are trying to lay
it on me.' "

This was the explanation Lee had advanced all along, and he enunciated
it now with such certitude that after a couple of meaningless follow-ups,
Rosser sat down, turning the witness back over to Dorsey. During the solic-
itor's redirect examination, he quickly established that Newt had not met
Jim Conley until a month after the murder, when both were in jail, thus
undermining the defense's contention that the men were accomplices. That
settled, Dorsey approached Bert Green's diagram of the pencil factory. He
intended to lead Lee through it one more time.

Before Dorsey could get started, however, Reuben Arnold was on his feet.
"I object to that picture," he protested. "It is nothing but Mr. Dorsey's theory
of the case. He's got all kinds of marks here." Why it had taken the defense so
long to speak up about the diagram is unclear, but the protest fell on deaf
ears. Roan ruled that since Dorsey was alluding to the work for reference
purposes only, he could proceed, which he did with a flourish, using the
umbrella Mary Phagan had been carrying April 26— the umbrella that had
been discovered in the factory elevator shaft the next morning— as a pointer.

Rosser, as well, got a final shot at Lee, but it seemed unduly harsh.
Returning to a tack that had already failed once, he tried to show that the
Negro had been quizzed so continuously that he'd become bewildered:
"The policemen and detectives talked to you all the time, didn't they? They
fired a pistol beside you, didn't they? My friend John Black and those fel-
lows talked to you day and night, didn't they? They cussed you and they
praised you, didn't they?"

To all this, Lee allowed that the police had questioned him a good deal,
but then, seizing a final chance to correct Rosser, he added: "Sir, they didn't
praise me none." Shortly thereafter, he was excused.

206 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

As Lee descended, the gallery, noted one writer, "smiled an applause as
gracious as bowing prima donna or stentorian tragedian ever received."
Outside the courtroom, the Negro was asked if there was anything he
wanted. Throat parched from the ordeal, he responded, "A chew of 'bacca,
any kind," prompting an outpouring of quids and plugs.

The consensus among the newspapers was that Lee's testimony— partic-
ularly his account of Frank's nervousness on Saturday afternoon and the
unexpected call later that night— had greatly aided the state. The bulk of
the analysis, however, was devoted less to the substance of Newt's words
than to the resiliency he had shown in the face of Rosser's blasts. Observed
the Constitution:

Seasoned courthouse officials and old reporters marveled at the way the
negro held out against the crossfire of questions, all aimed at confusing him.

Added the Journal:

The negro appeared to hold his own remarkably well under the rigid cross-
examination by Mr. Rosser. He argued with the attorney without hesitancy
and took open issue with the inquest record whenever the attorney con-
tended that it conflicted in minor ways with his testimony in court.

Yet it was the Georgian's James B. Nevin who contributed the sharpest
critique, commenting not just on Lee's grace under pressure but on the
miscalculations at the core of Rosser's approach. Regarding the lawyer's
attempts to tie the Negro to Mary Phagan's murder, Nevin wrote:

As for the examination of Newt Lee by Mr. Rosser, it impressed me
often as a mere shooting in the dark, hoping to hit something.

Regarding the ferocity with which Rosser had gone after Lee, Nevin was
even more dismayed:

Time and again, Lee rallied and came back at his tormenter with telling
effect— it is likely altogether that more than once the jury's sympathy went
out to Lee in large measure while Rosser was grilling him— and to the
darkey's occasional sallies and adroit sidesteps, the spectators in the court-
room frequently responded readily with approving titters and guffaws.

Nevin's most pointed remarks, however, were premonitory, casting an omi-
nous light on Rosser's impending engagement with a "far more important
sable figure," Jim Conley:

PROSECUTION 207

Will Conley be as nimble-witted as Lee was?

Will he be able to withstand the onslaughts of Rosser and Arnold even
approximately as well as Newt stood them?
If he does

At this juncture in the proceedings, Conley, of course, was still in the
future. For Hugh Dorsey, the immediate task was to continue erecting the
scaffolding of evidence that his star witness's testimony would cap, thus no
sooner had Lee stepped down than he called Sergeant L. S. Dobbs. From
Dobbs, the solicitor secured the familiar yet harrowing account of what the
responding officers found in the factory basement. "The girl was lying on
her face, the left side on the ground, the right side up. Her face was punc-
tured, full of holes, and was swollen and black. The cord was around her
neck, sunk into the flesh. Her tongue was protruding." After the sergeant
identified the murder notes (which he had located), the cord and the strips
of fabric that had in turn been looped over it, Dorsey asked him to demon-
strate how the noose had been fashioned. On cue, Dobbs took the cord and
tied it around the solicitor's outstretched arm.

In his examination of Detective John Starnes, Dorsey elicited a recita-
tion of his guarded Sunday phone conversation with Frank, a comparison
(over Arnold's objection) of Frank's nervousness with Lee's calm that
morning and a description of the red stains discovered on Monday in the
metal department. All of this was also well known, but what followed was
not. First, Dorsey asked Starnes to detail an experiment he'd conducted
with the plant clock that revealed that someone intent upon fabricating a
time slip implicating Lee could have done so in minutes. Next, Dorsey
ascertained that cord of the sort used in the crime had often been left dan-
gling from a nail near little Mary's knurling machine. Finally, he established
that a previously unremarked-upon door opening into the second-floor
chamber where he contended Frank committed the murder was usually
kept bolted (hence the photograph of the lock tacked to Green's diagram),
isolating the spot from the rest of the building.

Though the defense did not stand idly by as the state advanced its points,
Luther Rosser initially seemed at a loss on how to proceed. He started his
cross-examination of Dobbs, for instance, by taking a last stab at pinning
the crime on Lee. Considering Dobbs had supervised the test that indicated
the night watchman's lantern was so smudged he could not have made out
the body as he claimed and must have known more than he'd let on, the line
of questioning was not inexplicable. It was, however, ill-advised.

Once Rosser spit Lee from his craw, however, he began to counterattack
effectively along several fronts, serving notice that he intended not only to
tear apart the prosecution's case but to attach enough contradictory addi-

208 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

tions to transform anything left standing into an evidentiary scaffolding of
his own— one from which he planned to hang Jim Conley. For starters,
Rosser got Dobbs to mention the trail running the length of the basement
over which Mary Phagan's body had apparently been dragged. This was
hardly news. Everyone acknowledged that the body had been dragged—
everyone, that is, except Conley, who in his last affidavit had sworn he'd car-
ried it on his shoulder. While Rosser failed to persuade Dobbs to take the
next step and agree to the proposition that the trail began beneath the scut-
tle hole ladder (a proposition that had the sergeant confirmed it would have
undermined the state's thesis that the body had been transported in the
elevator), he didn't let this setback slow him down, moving quickly to intro-
duce a number of other details Dorsey had ignored. First, he obtained
the admission that the basement contained enough pads and pencils for the
murder notes to have been written there. Then he secured the fact that the
basement door had been crowbarred— again, a well-known particular, but
for the state a vexing one, as Frank would have had no reason to take such
action. Finally, he induced Dobbs to confess that he had casually examined
Mary's underpants and consequently couldn't recall whether they had been
slit with a knife or torn by hand. Why Rosser raised the distinction, he
didn't say, intimating that all would be explained in time.

With Starnes, Rosser took essentially the same tack, beginning by trying
to determine if there were further facts concerning the crime scene that the
state had slighted. For openers, he focused on the basement door, specifi-
cally the metal staple that had been pulled from it. Had Starnes noticed
that the staple was bent? Yes, the detective replied— which was exactly
the answer Rosser wanted, suggesting, as it did, that whoever escaped out
the back had used a considerable degree of force. Rosser then attacked the
most damaging elements of Starnes's direct testimony. He started by assail-
ing the detective's recollections of his Sunday-morning phone conversation
with Frank, peppering him with questions designed to elicit discrepancies
between his trial account and the version he'd given at the inquest. As
he'd done when Rosser used the strategy against Lee, Dorsey frequently
objected, but Judge Roan allowed the examination to continue, and while
the differences it produced were inconsequential, Starnes eventually con-
fessed: "I cannot give the words of the conversation between myself and
Mr. Frank." This admission secured, Rosser tore into the rest of Starnes's
story. Could the detective swear that the red spots discovered on the metal-
department floor were blood? "I don't know that the splotches that I saw
there were blood," Starnes conceded. Weren't cords like those located near
Mary's workstation also to be found in the basement? Not exactly, Starnes
responded. Those cords had been "cut up in pieces" shorter than the length
used in the crime. Then how about elsewhere in the plant? Yes, Starnes

PROSECUTION 209

acknowledged, "there generally were pieces of cord in all parts of the build-
ing." Finally, Rosser asked the detective to critique the responding officers'
performance, earning the concession that they had overlooked such clues
as Mary's hat.

Rosser had at last begun to exhibit his vaunted prowess, yet as Dorsey
briskly demonstrated when the witnesses were turned back over to him
for redirect examination, the prosecution was not going to surrender any
ground.

During his second pass at Dobbs, Dorsey did his best to derail the idea
that the body had found its way to the basement other than via the elevator.
"A man couldn't get down that ladder with another person," Dobbs testi-
fied. Then Dorsey mocked the notion that the basement door would have
required any great strength to jimmy, eliciting the statement that the staple,
far from being bent, was straight and smooth as if from frequent removals.

During his second go at Starnes, Dorsey attempted to bolster the point
that no matter the exact words, Frank's demeanor on the morning the body
was discovered had been suspicious. This he did by glossing over the phone
call and focusing on some of Frank's later behavior at the factory, specifi-
cally his effort to joke with his coworker Darley regarding the fact that he
wasn't wearing his typical brown suit but was instead clad in blue. ("Did
anyone else joke that morning?" the solicitor inquired. "No," Starnes re-
plied.) Then, in an attempt to combat the doubt generated by Starnes's
inability to say whether the red spots discovered in the metal room were in
fact blood, Dorsey produced several chunks of stained wooden floor, which
the detective identified as the pieces chipped up the Monday after the mur-
der. Having thereby established the evidence's tangibility, if not its chemical
composition, Dorsey hurried on, ending his exam by using Starnes to intro-
duce what would be a recurring theme— the alleged preferential treatment
accorded Frank since his arrest. Dorsey was subtle here, merely asking the
detective to recall how Frank, prior to his transfer to the Tower, escaped
confinement in the headquarters lockup by securing a private room adja-
cent to Chief Lanford's office.

With the conclusion of Starnes's testimony late Hiesday, the pattern that
would prevail for the next several days had been set. The battle would
seethe back and forth as one side, then the other, fought to get across its
theory of the crime. As in most circumstantial evidence cases, these theories
rested on numerous, conflicting details, none more prone to dispute than
those concerning the murder scene itself. Which was why the significance of
a skirmish that took place once Starnes stepped down was immediately rec-
ognizable.

Afternoon shadows had begun to fall when Judge Roan asked opposing
counsel if they had any business to conduct before he called the day's ses-

210 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

sion to an end. Yes, Dorsey replied, he wanted to enter some material into
evidence. The murder notes, the length of cord, Mary's clothing— all were
acceptable to the defense. A final item, however, was not. After examining
Bert Green's factory diagram, Luther Rosser exclaimed: "Oh, no, this will
never go into the evidence. If my brother wants to insist on it, why I ask that
the jury be excused while we argue it."

Once the jurors departed, Rosser resumed: "Your honor, this thing is not
admissible." Then, turning to Dorsey, he added: "I didn't think you or my
friend Hooper would try to put such a thing as this over me— seriously." Yet
beneath his jocularity, Rosser was in deadly earnest. Here was a work that
depicted Frank meeting Mary Phagan in his office, accompanying her to the
metal room, then carrying her body to the basement in the elevator. Here,
in other words, was a work that presented some of the case's most debat-
able points as if they were proven facts, and on the heels of Rosser's protest,
an outwardly chastened Dorsey conceded: "I realized that the plat was
inadmissible." Accordingly, Roan ordered the solicitor to remove "anything
argumentative" from the illustration, bringing the session to its close.

Yet when court reconvened Wednesday morning, the issue had not
been resolved. All printed matter had been excised from the diagram, but
the Maltese crosses and the colored lines remained. Leaping to his feet,
Reuben Arnold objected: "You don't have to label a horse to see it is a
horse." In response, Dorsey acknowledged that the markings represented
theories. But he then produced several precedents dug up for him by
William Smith, who since the trial's first day had been posted in the solici-
tor's law library. "As issues arose," Smith later recalled, "I would make a
rapid examination of the authorities and send Mr. Dorsey a brief sum-
mary." In this instance, Smith's research showed that Georgia judges had
previously accepted similar works into evidence, and Roan ruled that
"State's Exhibit A" could be admitted without further alteration. Conse-
quently, the illustration would hang in the jurors' view until the state rested
and abide in their minds for who knew how long.

The trial's atmosphere would now grow more heated in every sense of
the word— for, as by this juncture was apparent, the much heralded ozona-
tors were a bust. On Tuesday, the temperature inside the courtroom had
reached 91 degrees. Consequently, Wednesday found spectators falling
back on an older but more reliable technology, the handheld fan, and
reporters removed their suit jackets. To the request that attorneys be al-
lowed to do likewise, Judge Roan humorously demurred. "Lawyers must
wear coats," he said. "If I let them go in shirtsleeves, they'd feel so comfort-
able this trial might never end." Roan did, however, order the windows

PROSECUTION 211

opened. The cooling effect of this action, if any, was offset by making the
proceedings accessible to the multitudes, transforming a row of contractor's
sheds lining the construction site across Hunter Street where Atlanta's new
courthouse was rising into a spillover gallery. For the duration, a veritable
knothole gang would colonize the sheds' rooftops, intensifying the sensa-
tion for those within that the eyes of the city weighed palpably upon them.

Stultifying though the courtroom was, Hugh Dorsey pressed resolutely
ahead, beginning his examination of Wednesday's initial witness, Boots
Rogers, by inquiring into the scene that had greeted him and Detective
John Black in the parlor of the Franks' Georgia Avenue home the Sunday
the body was discovered. Here, the solicitor was presenting some of the
case's most ambiguous material, but he marched his witness through it as if
nothing was in doubt, not just securing the expected account of Frank's
anxiety but playing up new nuances, among them the possibility that the
superintendent had been hungover. This Dorsey did merely by asking:
"Was anything said about whisky?" "Yes," Rogers replied, first recalling
Black's suggestion that Frank, far from needing the much discussed cup
of coffee, actually needed a drink, then Lucille's response that her ailing
father had downed the contents of the house's only bottle that very night.
In the wake of Minola McKnight's affidavit, such recollections could only
have sparked the most obvious inference.

Dorsey next elicited Rogers's version of the morning's subsequent
doings. First, there was the stop at the morgue: "Mr. Gheesling caught the
face of the dead girl and turned it over towards me. I looked then to see if
anybody followed me and I saw Mr. Frank step from outside of the door
into what I thought was a closet." Then the visit to the factory.

Of the many details regarding Frank's behavior that Sunday, none were
potentially more damaging than those pertaining to the hour he spent with
Rogers, Black and Assistant Superintendent N. V. Darley at the plant,
and under Dorsey 's questioning, the witness ticked them off— the several
requests for a cup of coffee, the comments regarding the connection
between insurance regulations and the unlocked fuse box, and the difficulty
starting the elevator. After securing an account of the tour of the basement,
the solicitor directed Rogers to the most damaging detail of all— Newt
Lee's time slip:

"What did you do then?"

"Mr. Frank says/I had better put in a new slip, hadn't I, Darley?' Darley
told him yes, to put in a slip. Frank took his keys out, unlocked the door of
the clock and lifted out the slip, looked at it and made the remark that the
slip was punched correctly."

"Where was Newt Lee?"

212 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"Lee was right behind me, handcuffed."

"Where was Darley?"

"He was right there."

"What happened next?"

"Mr. Frank went to his office, brought out a new slip. He took out the
old slip and wrote on it 'Removed 8:26.' "

"What did he do with it?"

"He folded it once and went into his office."

"Did you see that slip?"

"Yes, I glanced at it. The first punch was 6:01 and the second at 6:32.
There did not appear to be any skip in it."

Thus once again, Frank's ultimate assertion regarding Lee's punches was
contradicted. After obtaining a last mention of the superintendent's anxiety
that morning, Dorsey turned the witness over to the defense.

Luther Rosser began his cross-examination by immediately establishing
that Rogers had never seen Frank before the Sunday the body was discov-
ered and couldn't know "whether his nervousness was natural to him or
not." Then, after a few other questions designed to put a generally less sin-
ister spin on Frank's actions that morning, the lawyer reintroduced the mat-
ter that Dorsey had so insinuatingly broached:

"Was anything said about a little drink doing you all good?" he asked.

"Yes. Black said something about a drink. Mrs. Frank called to Mrs.
Selig and she said there was no whisky in the house; that Mr. Selig had an
acute attack of indigestion the night before and used it all."

This was the reply Rosser had been seeking. "He had an attack of acute
indigestion and drank up all the liquor," he repeated. "Well, I have those
attacks occasionally myself." Coming from the mighty Rosser, such self-
deprecation, no matter how calculated, was disarming, and the courtroom
dissolved into laughter in which, to everyone's surprise, Leo Frank joined.

FRANK LAUGHS FOR FIRST TIME DURING TRIAL WHEN HOME INCIDENT

is told, boomed the Georgian's headline. And no wonder. Not only had
Frank never previously laughed during the proceedings, save for the flicker
of interest during the jury selection process, he hadn't exhibited any emo-
tion at all. Observed the Georgian's Fuzzy Woodruff : "Arms akimbo, glasses
firmly set, changing position seldom, Leo M. Frank sits through his trial
with his thoughts in Kamchatka, Terra del Fuego, or the Antipodes, so far as
the spectators in the courtroom can judge ... To those who believe Frank

PROSECUTION 213

guilty, his personality is not one to arouse pity." Yet now, Frank removed the
mask just long enough to reveal that he had a sense of humor.

From here, Rosser's interrogation of Rogers degenerated. Though he
exacted the concession that there was a chance Frank had seen Mary Pha-
gan's body at the morgue, and secured the fact that the factory elevator was
"noisy," he expended most of his energy battling Dorsey for literal domi-
nance of the courtroom. The fight started when Rosser positioned himself
in such a manner that the solicitor could no longer see the witness. To
Dorsey's request that he move, he replied: "Get a stick, Hugh, and keep me
punched out of the way." With that, Rosser barreled ahead, but in his ela-
tion at this successful bit of school-yard bullying, the lawyer ignored two
vital points. First, he did nothing to counter Rogers's testimony regarding
Lee's time slip. Second, he paid no heed to a statement the witness made
near the end of his cross-examination concerning a most enigmatic clue:

In the elevator shaft there was some excrement. When we went down on
the elevator, the elevator mashed it. You could smell it all around. It
looked like the ordinary healthy man's excrement . . . that was before the
elevator came down. When the elevator came down afterwards it smashed
it and then we smelled it.

However upset Leo Frank may have been the Sunday Mary Phagan's
remains were discovered, and however compelling the evidence located in
the factory metal room was, Hugh Dorsey knew that to win a conviction, he
would have to move beyond these concerns to the matter of motive. He had
to prove that Frank had been acquainted with and attracted to little Mary.
Which was why once Boots Rogers left the stand, Dorsey called Grace
Hicks.

Sixteen-year-old Grace, a cherub-cheeked girl in a white dress adorned
at the neck and elbows by blue ribbon, had, of course, identified Mary Pha-
gan's body, and Dorsey opened his examination by gently returning her to
that horrific moment. Yet after posing just a couple of questions regarding
the topic, he dropped it. For the task at hand, the witness's recollections of
Mary dead were less important than those of her alive:

"Was she pretty?"

"Yes. She was fair-skinned, had light hair, blue eyes, and was well devel-
oped for her age."

"Where did you work?"

"In the metal room."

"How often was Mary at the factory?"

214 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"Nearly every day."

"Where was Mary's workplace?"

"Right next to the dressing room."

Here, Dorsey briefly abandoned this line of inquiry to introduce the fact
that the Monday following the murder, Grace had seen the red spots on the
metal-department floor near the dressing room. Then he resumed:

"A person going from the office back to the rear of the second floor
would have had to pass the dressing room, the place near where Mary Pha-
gan worked, wouldn't they?"

"Yes."

"Did Frank pass there every day?"

"Almost every day. He would come back two or three times a day to see
how the work was going on."

"When was Mary at the factory last to work?"

"The Monday before April 26."

"Why didn't she work that week?"

"The metal hadn't come."

"Where was the metal kept?"

"In a little closet under the stairway."

"When was the regular payday?"

"Saturday at 12."

"Was anyone paid off Saturday, April 26?"

"Most of them were paid off the Friday night before, as Saturday was a
holiday."

As to why Mary Phagan hadn't been among those who'd received their
wages on Friday, Dorsey didn't ask, preferring to conclude on this allusive
note.

No matter how much Grace Hicks's testimony appeared to have advanced
the state's case, by putting the girl on the stand Dorsey had provided the
defense with an opportunity, and once Rosser took the floor, he wasted no
time initiating what would prove to be a devastating cross-examination:

"You worked at the factory a year?"

"I worked there five years. Mary worked there a year."

"In those five years, how many times did you speak to Mr. Frank?"

"Three times."

"How many times did you see him speak to Mary Phagan?"

PROSECUTION 215

"I never saw Mr. Frank speak to Mary Phagan or Mary Phagan speak to
Mr. Frank."

"Did he speak to the girls when he came through the metal room?"

"No. He just went through and looked around."

"What did he say when he spoke to you?"

"He was showing a man around and I was laying on my arm mighty
near asleep and he says: 'You can run this machine asleep, can't you?' And
I said, 'Yes, sir.' The other times he spoke to me on the street."

Had Rosser gone no further, he already would have exposed Dorsey's
attempt to use Grace to suggest a link between Frank and Mary Phagan
for the flimsy enterprise that it was. But the big man was just limbering
up. In Grace, he had at his disposal a state's witness who could do more
damage to the state than to the defense— and he intended to see that she
did. First, there were those worrisome red stains on the metal room floor.
While Rosser did not ask about them per se, he did ask about the floor,
eliciting the admission that not only was it "awful dirty" and not only did
the "white stuff used in the department get all over it but that the polish-
ing room, where paint was stored, happened to be nearby. Conceded
Grace: "I have seen drops of paint on the floor. I have seen it leading from
the door straight across from the dressing room out to the cooler where the
women come out to get water. The floor all over the factory is dirty and
greasy. And after two or three days, you can hardly tell what is on the
floor."

The prosecution's blood evidence further undermined, Rosser then used
Grace to strike a preemptive blow at that other avidly awaited exhibit of
scientific proof— the strands of hair discovered on a metal-department
lathe the Monday following the murder. Dorsey, of course, was reputedly
ready to argue that the hair had come from Mary Phagan's head, but after
what this witness would testify, such a theory was going to be more difficult to
advance.

"Miss Grace," Rosser began, "there is a place up there where you comb
your hair, isn't there?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"Sometimes, we sit over at the machine and comb our hair and some-
times when I want to curl my hair with a poker or anything I go over there
to the table right by the window and light the gas and curl my hair."

"How far from the machine where you sit and comb your hair is the
lathe where the strands of hair were found?"

"About fifteen feet."

2l6 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"Was there another girl who sat near Mary who had hair like hers?"
"Yes, Magnolia Kennedy sat on one side of her and I sat on the other.
Magnolia's hair was sandy, too."

During his redirect, Dorsey salvaged what he could, but regardless of
the fact that Grace told him she'd never seen any red paint in the metal
room, and despite her admission that she still worked at the factory —which
implied that she was beholden to Frank— the damage was done. Headlines
told the tale. Cried the Georgian:

GIRL'S STORY HELPS FRANK

Echoed the Journal, albeit more soberly:

Defense to Claim Strands of Hair Found
Were Not Mary Phagan's

Only the Constitution abstained. By the time the morning sheet's Thursday
editions went to press, Grace's story would be subsumed by far more dra-
matic news.

The state's next witness, Detective John Black, was highly anticipated.
From the beginning, he'd been involved in every aspect of the investigation,
and Dorsey intended to use him both to firm up the foundation of his case
and to contribute a few new pieces.

Unlike the other officers summoned the morning Mary Phagan's body
was discovered, Black testified, he'd already been acquainted with Leo
Frank. Prior to that Sunday, he averred, he'd twice met the superintendent
when visiting the pencil factory on routine police business. On neither oc-
casion, he added at Dorsey's behest, had Frank betrayed a particularly
excitable nature.

Black's psychologizing prompted an objection from the defense, and
Judge Roan admonished the solicitor to stick to the facts. But this reproof
notwithstanding, Dorsey had enhanced the detective's credibility on a vital
issue, paving the way for the assault that now followed:

"When you saw Frank the morning of April 27 did he seem nervous?"
"Yes."
"Why?"

"Because he had some considerable trouble putting on a collar. It
seemed that he couldn't tie his necktie."

PROSECUTION 217

"What did he say about going to the factory?"

"He kept on insisting on getting a cup of coffee, and I finally told him
that I had been up until one o'clock the night before and had then been
aroused at four o'clock in the morning and hadn't had any coffee or break-
fast, either. I told him we'd better go to the factory and get that over with."

Which, of course, was Dorsey 's destination, too. After a nod to the events
at the morgue (Black, too, maintained that Frank couldn't have seen the
victim's face), he introduced the subject of the factory tour, dwelling on the
incident to which he'd so consistently returned:

"Did you see him go to the clock?"

"Yes. He looked at it, made an examination, and said it had been
punched correctly up until 2:30 a.m."

"Did Frank state at any time that the clock was inaccurate?"

"He said on Tbesday that the clock had been passed three times."

"Did Frank produce a time slip at that time?"

"Yes, a slip which he gave to Chief Lanford on Monday."

"What became of the slip he had Sunday?"

"He carried it into his office on Sunday morning."

"Who was present Sunday morning when he stated the slip had been
punched regularly?"

"Detective Starnes, Chief Lanford, Newt Lee, Boots Rogers and
myself."

"When did you first hear Frank state the slip was incorrect?"

"I cannot swear. It was Tuesday or Monday, one or the other."

"Who was being held at that time under suspicion of the crime?"

"Newt Lee."

"Frank was not then under arrest?"

"No."

The solicitor's intimation couldn't have been more pointed.

Dorsey was not finished with Black. As the detective's testimony regard-
ing Lee's time slip brought home, what made him so valuable to the state
was his ability to discuss the developments that over an interval of days had
increased suspicion of Frank, and it was with the intention of putting more
such material before the jury that the solicitor now inquired if Frank had
engaged counsel prior to being taken into custody. Despite the de rigueur
defense objection, Judge Roan sustained Dorsey, and the detective replied:
"When Mr. Frank was down at the police station on Monday morning, Mr.
Rosser and Mr. Haas were there. About 8 or 8:30 Monday morning Mr.
Rosser came to police headquarters." This circumstance thus pegged to a

2l8 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

period twenty-four hours before Frank's arrest, the solicitor delved into the
role the lawyers had initially played:

"Did you hear Haas make a statement in Frank's presence?"

"Yes. Haas demanded of Chief Lanford that the officers accompany Mr.

Frank out to his residence and search his residence."

"What were Haas's grounds for making such a demand?"

"He stated that he was Mr. Frank's attorney and demanded to show

that there was nothing left undone."
"What time was that?"
"About 11:30."

That Dorsey was contemplating suggesting a link between the visit to
Frank's home and the subsequent visit to Lee's shack (where the police
found the infamous bloody shirt), there can be no doubt, but significantly,
he did not at this juncture go further. Instead, he broached several other
matters, among them the arrest of James M. Gantt, eliciting the statement
that the ex-bookkeeper was not apprehended until Frank fingered him.
Finally, he asked if Frank's bearing had altered from day to day. Replied
Black: "After his release Monday, he seemed very jovial. OnTUesday he was
sullen." Something amiss thereby implied, the solicitor sat down.

Whatever good Black seemed to have done the state's case, within thirty
seconds Luther Rosser was ripping away the integument of expertise and
probity in which the man cloaked himself and exposing the sinew of incom-
petence and deceit that many believed constituted the inner fiber of the
entire Atlanta Police Department:

"You didn't release Mr. Frank," Rosser began innocently enough, "until
the word was given from the chief of detectives, did you?"
"I suppose not."

"Do you mean anything by the word release?"
"I spoke before I thought when I uttered it."
"Wasn't his detainment equivalent to arrest?"
"I can't say so."

"Then you retract a thing you said under oath?"
"Yes, I retract the word release."

Just that easily, Rosser had suggested why Frank had retained counsel on
Monday. Moreover, he'd bewildered Black. This, though, was merely the
overture:

PROSECUTION 219

"Wasn't it 10:00 before I got to the station?" Rosser now asked, know-
ing full well he had indeed arrived at that hour.
"No . . . you got there between 8:30 and 8:00."
"Will you swear it?"
"I won't swear it ... I don't know."

And just that easily, Rosser had suggested that Black's memory was unreli-
able. This, though, was still merely the overture:

"Who was present when you talked to Frank on the time previous to
Sunday?" Rosser now inquired, referring to Black's professed earlier con-
versations with the superintendent.

"I don't remember."

"As a matter of fact, you can't swear truthfully that you spoke to him at
all, can you?"

"Not positively."

With that, the dam burst. What time had Detective Starnes phoned Frank
on Sunday morning? Black didn't know. What time had he arrived at the
Franks' home? Black didn't know. What kind of tie had Frank experienced
such difficulty with? Black didn't know. Then:

"Hurry and scurry is an enemy to memory, isn't it?"

"Yes."

Black was collapsing. "The detective's features flushed crimson," noted
the Georgian. "He mopped his face which was running with perspiration.
Then he held his handkerchief up by two of its corners to dry in the breeze
from an electric fan." Still, Rosser had at him, particularly regarding the evi-
dence relating to the crime scene. First, he took up the purported blood-
stains:

"You went through the factory with Frank?"

"Yes."

"Who else went?"

"I don't know— several people."

"And none of you saw the splotch said to be blood?"

"No, sir."

"How many of you went over the building?"

"I don't know exactly."

"Perhaps thirty people?"

"I don't know."

220 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"This large horde made up of officers and curiosity seekers went over
the factory and nobody saw these alleged blood spots?"

"No, sir."

"How long was the factory open on Sunday morning— till about 12:00,
was it not?"

"I don't know."

"How many times did you go to the factory that morning?"

"Twice."

"Detective Starnes went over the factory with you, did he not?"

"Yes."

"Campbell and Beavers, too?"

"I don't know about Beavers, but Chief Lanford did."

"And no blood spots were discovered that day?"

"Not so far as I know."

Then Rosser addressed, at long last, the matter of Lee's time slip:

"You saw Frank at the clock?"

"Yes."

"He opened the clock and took out a slip?"

"Yes."

"When did Frank turn over this slip that he took out of the clock?"

"I don't know."

"Didn't you tell Mr. Dorsey a few minutes ago that he turned over the
slip on Monday morning?"

"I don't remember."

"Look here, Black. Is your memory so bad you can't remember what
you told Dorsey twenty or thirty minutes ago? And yet you attempt here
to state the words of conversations that occurred more than three months
ago?"

There was no answer.

Having tarnished Black's credibility concerning the matters to which he
had testified, Rosser would now tackle the matters to which he had not tes-
tified. The hope here was to steal a march on Dorsey, who by earlier letting
Black off the hook regarding his search of Frank's home and all that fol-
lowed had unwittingly opened himself to attack.

Rosser sprang his offensive by asking Black if he'd been at headquarters
Monday when Frank disrobed. Not surprisingly, Dorsey objected to this,
but Judge Roan, noting that the solicitor had flirted with the subject during
his direct examination, allowed the question, and simple as that, Rosser had
co-opted a key portion of the state's case. Now Frank's counsel would

PROSECUTION 221

determine how the murky series of occurrences that had ended in the dis-
covery of the bloody shirt at Lee's would be presented to the jury, and he
started by asking Black if the station house striptease had inspired the trip
to Frank's home. Yes, the detective replied, adding: "We went out there and
examined the clothes he'd worn the week before and the laundry, too. Mr.
Frank went with us and showed us the dirty linen." Rosser then grilled
Black about a later outing:

"You also went to Lee's house?"

"Yes."

"What did you find?"

"A bloody shirt."

"Where is it?"

"Mr. Dorsey has it."

At this, Rosser asked the solicitor to produce the shirt, which he was obliged
to do, handing it to his adversary, who then displayed it to the witness:

"Is that the shirt, Mr. Black?"
"Yes, sir."

"What time did you find it?"
"Tuesday morning, about 9:00."

The Hugh Dorsey who now undertook Black's redirect examination was
not the same man who'd heretofore so coolly withstood Rosser's taunts.
Visibly agitated, he tried to introduce a line of inquiry that would suggest
Frank had inspired the search of Lee's home, but when Rosser sharply
objected, he looked to Roan for help, exclaiming:

Our contention is that this shirt was a plant and Frank's request was a ruse
to get the police to search his house and then Newt Lee's house and thus
throw suspicion on the negro.

As soon as these words left Dorsey's mouth, the Georgian's James B. Nevin
glanced at Rosser and, as he put it, "saw what I expected to see— a momen-
tary flicker of a smile about the lips and eyes."

Dorsey, however, was oblivious, and when Roan ruled that he could con-
tinue, he secured a couple of statements that seemed to confirm his claim that
Frank had engineered the expedition to Lee's. To wit: Black swore that Frank
had not only informed him that he believed the night watchman had failed to
divulge everything he knew about the murder but that the missed punches
showed he would have had "an hour to have gone out to his house and back."

222 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

On the surface, Black's testimony appeared to buttress Dorsey's thesis,
but the reason for Rosser's smile— and the likely reason the solicitor had
avoided getting into this subject at the start— became plain once Dorsey
asked the detective when Frank had said such things. Black's answer
couldn't have been more disastrous: "I don't remember whether that was
before or after I went out to Lee's house and found the shirt."

Realizing what had just occurred, Dorsey blanched. Under his question-
ing, his witness had undermined the surmise atop which a part of his evi-
dentiary construct stood, suggesting that the links between anything Frank
had said or done and the search of Lee's house were tenuous at best. And
while the solicitor would attempt to recover, eventually exacting Black's
assurance that Frank's remarks regarding the missed punches had preceded
the trip to Lee's, such an admission was of little help. Dorsey had suffered a
self-inflicted wound, and all he could do was cede the floor.

For the first time since the trial began, Luther Rosser held the advantage,
and he used it. "Don't you know, Black," he began his last assault, "that as a
matter of fact, that shirt was found before Frank ever said anything to you
about the misses in that time tape?"

The detective opened his mouth, but no answer came forth.

"Don't you know it?" Rosser persisted.

Still no answer.

Whereupon Rosser extracted his pocket watch and held it before the
witness. After an excruciating minute or so, the judge attempted to inter-
vene, but Rosser urged: "Give him time to answer, your honor."

A few seconds later, Black confided: "I don't remember." Then he bale-
fully added: "I don't like to admit it, but I am so crossed up and worried that
I don't know where I am at."

At this, Rosser snorted, "Come down."

Once again, headlines told the tale. Declared the Georgian:

Collapse of Testimony of Black Great Aid to Defense

Seconded the Journal:

Detective John Black "Goes to Pieces"

But it was Dorsey's supporters at the Constitution who played the story
hardest. Beneath the page-one banner defense riddles john black's
testimony, the morning paper reported:

PROSECUTION 223

When Wednesday's session of the Leo M. Frank trial had come to a
close, the friends of the accused were filled with high hopes for his acquit-
tal. They were nothing short of jubilant . . .

The feeling was based on the fact that the testimony of John Black . . .
who had worked up a large share of the evidence against Frank, fell to the
ground . . .

Time and again, Black contradicted himself . . .

Solicitor Dorsey had stated that he expected to show that Black had
gone to Lee's house only after Frank had informed him that several punches
were missing from the time slip taken from the register clock . . . that after
Frank's house had been searched for incriminating evidence at the sugges-
tion of Herbert Haas, that Frank sought to have Lee's house searched and
that the bloody shirt was really a "plant."

Black's answers failed to bear out the contention of the solicitor.

The verdict was unanimous. As the Georgian's James B. Nevin observed:

There is a feeling, growing more fixed every day, I think, that the State,
if it hopes to win, must set up something more than it has yet made public!

If the State has some big cards up its sleeve, if it is prepared to surprise
the defense . . . then the case yet is in its infancy and the real charge against
Frank still is to be made out.

If the State has no unrevealed evidence and is NOT prepared to strike
the defense heavy and unanticipated blows, it is but the simple and honest
truth to say here and now that the feeling, vague and elusive enough, but
unmistakably there, [is] that acquittal eventually will come to Frank . . .

The Black debacle, according to still another reporter, "was enough to
stun any man," but Hugh Dorsey righted himself immediately. He started
the process in the waning minutes of Wednesday's session by calling James
M. Gantt, the dismissed pencil company bookkeeper. Predictably, Dorsey
asked Gantt to reiterate his account of Frank's nervous reaction to their
encounter outside the factory the afternoon of the murder. Then he guided
his witness to new territory:

"Did you know Mary Phagan?"

"Yes, I knew her when she was a little girl."

"Did Leo M. Frank know Mary Phagan?"

"Yes."

"How do you know that?"

"One day she had been in the office talking to me about a mistake in her

224 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

time. When she left, Mr. Frank turned to me and said, 'You seem to know
Mary pretty well.' "

Gantt's assertion, of course, contradicted Frank's denials that he'd been
acquainted with the girl, and Dorsey followed up with a series of inquiries
suggesting that Frank had manufactured the bookkeeper's $2 payroll short-
age to get rid of someone he regarded as an impediment to his lecherous
designs. During cross-examination, Luther Rosser sought to discredit Gantt
by compelling him to admit he'd told the inquest he had never seen Frank
with little Mary and was unaware he knew her. Yet such concessions, dam-
aging though they were, did not negate Gantt's story. Dorsey had deftly
reintroduced the idea that Frank had been eyeing his victim all along,
checking the defense's momentum.

Thursday morning, Dorsey began building some momentum of his own.
Pinkerton agent Harry Scott, though serving at Frank's behest, had helped
John Black collect much of the prosecution evidence, and after taking the
stand, he dropped a bombshell, reversing himself regarding a crucial com-
ment Frank made during their initial conversation. Heretofore, in both his
first report and at the inquest, Scott had maintained Frank stated that after
paying Mary Phagan on April 26, he'd answered her parting query as to
whether a metal shipment had arrived with an unequivocal "no." Now the
detective proclaimed: "He replied that he didn't know."

This shocker, implying that Frank had responded ambiguously to little
Mary in an effort to lure her to the metal room, contributed mightily to the
state's theory of the crime. Yet as Dorsey realized, the defense could chalk
up anything Scott said to his being in league with the authorities; thus
before he went further, he endeavored to persuade the jury that the Pinker-
ton agent's true allegiances were more complex. The solicitor did so by pos-
ing some seemingly straightforward inquiries regarding Frank's mood
during the pair's inaugural meeting and a bid he supposedly made to direct
suspicion at Gantt. When Scott, in turn, professed ignorance of such mat-
ters, an outwardly exasperated Dorsey looked to Judge Roan: "Your honor,
I have been misinformed as to what the witness would testify. I have
been misled." Toward that end, the solicitor requested the opportunity to
"refresh" Scott's memory.

Immediately, Rosser sensed something wrong. "Questions like these
grate on my ears like the false notes from a piano," he roared, adding that
unless the solicitor intended to impeach Scott, he was on shaky ground. To
this, Dorsey responded that impeachment was the furthest thing from his
mind, insisting that he merely wanted to hold Scott to his word. Then he
brazenly stated his case: "Your honor, if there ever was a time when a wit-

PROSECUTION 225

ness should be led, it is now with this detective who was hired by the pencil
factory and has been working with the attorneys for the defense. When I
talked with him and he told me things and now he testifies differently, I
have a right to lead him."

After consulting precedents, Roan ruled that while Dorsey could not
lead the witness, he could reacquaint him with specific points of his story.
The upshot: Scott was soon recalling that at the meeting in question, Frank
took deep breaths and his eyes were "large and piercing." Moreover, he
added that Frank laid "special stress" on Gantt's attentions to Mary Phagan.

And so by dint of pettifoggery, Dorsey managed to have it both ways
with Scott, distancing him from the police and tying him to Frank even as he
exacted more damaging testimony. Nonetheless, the solicitor still wasn't
satisfied. In a final attempt to insulate Scott, he asked: "Was anything said
by one of the attorneys for Frank about you suppressing evidence?"

Here again, Rosser objected, but while Roan sustained him, he allowed
Dorsey to rephrase the question, and soon Scott was revealing: "The first
week in May, Superintendent Pierce [Scott's boss] and I went to Mr. Her-
bert Haas's office . . . and had a conference with him as to the Pinkerton
Agency's position in the matter. Mr. Haas stated that he would rather we
would submit our reports to him before we turned [them] over to the
police. We told him we would withdraw before we would adopt any practice
of that sort."

With that, Dorsey managed to have it a third way with Scott, making it
appear that whatever his connections to 175 Decatur Street, they were
rooted in the interest of justice; and on that note, he returned the agent to
the subject of the investigation itself, eliciting his account of Frank's station
house encounter with Newt Lee: "Frank hung his head the entire time the
negro was talking to him, and finally in about thirty seconds, he said, 'Well,
they have got me too.' Mr. Frank was extremely nervous at that time. He
was very squirmy in his chair, crossing one leg after the other and didn't
know where to put his hands."

Dorsey could not have staged a stronger comeback, and after securing
Scott's profession that in the early days of the probe he'd conducted a
"thorough search" of the factory lobby and "found no pay envelope or
bludgeon" and, more vitally, his assertion that a week after the murder,
Frank told him he'd been at his office desk "every minute" between 12:00
and 12:30 the afternoon of April 26, he returned to his chair.

Luther Rosser opened his cross-examination of Scott with a flurry, estab-
lishing that while Herbert Haas may have requested advance copies of the

226 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

agent's reports, he'd also indicated "he wanted the murderer caught regard-
less of who it was."

Yet from this point forth, Rosser would struggle, for as the Georgian
noted: "Scott refused to be cowed." The Pinkerton agent easily evaded
Rosser's thrusts. Why hadn't he reported Frank's attempt to incriminate
Gantt? "Because the day I made this report Gantt was released from police
headquarters and was regarded as no longer a suspect." Why hadn't he told
the inquest of Frank's anxious station house interview with Lee? "You
should remember, Mr. Rosser, that I was answering only questions that
were asked me by the coroner, and that he didn't draw out and cross ques-
tion me."

Similarly, Scott was unflappable in the face of Rosser's stabs at portray-
ing him as a police toady:

"Your agency works with the police, does it not?"
"Yes, on criminal investigations."

"You always hook up with the police and go down the road with them,
don't you?"

"We work in harmony with the police."

The only time Rosser again laid a glove on Scott came after he reminded
the detective that another factory official— Assistant Superintendent Dar-
ley— had accompanied Frank to their all-important first get-together. Con-
fronted with this fact, Scott was forced to confess that he didn't know which
man had brought Gantt's name into play. "I am not sure whether I got the
statement about Mary Phagan being familiar with Gantt from Mr. Darley
or Mr. Frank," he admitted.

That, however, was that. Though Rosser had Scott dead to rights when it
came to his last and most significant line of questioning, he couldn't make
anything stick:

"Mr. Scott, you say now that Mr. Frank told you when the little girl
asked him if the metal had come, Mr. Frank replied, 'I don't know'?"

"Yes."

"Didn't you swear before the coroner that he said, 'No'?"

"Yes. I have said about half and half all the time."

"Didn't you say in a report to me that he said, 'No'?"

"Yes."

"Did you mean I don't know? Don't you know that the meanings of the
words are quite different?"

"It was just a grammatical error. I now swear positively he said, 'I don't
know.' "

PROSECUTION 227

In the face of such resolve, there was nothing Rosser could do but sit down.
As the Journal flatly concluded: "Scott proved a difficult witness for Mr.
Rosser."

The 14-year-old girl who replaced Harry Scott on the stand made a fetching
picture. Blond hair piled beneath a broad-brimmed hat, cheeks flushed but
expression composed, tan cotton dress cut well above the ankles, Monteen
Stover was yet another pretty factory girl. She was also one of the state's
most important witnesses. If the story she swore to just a week after the
murder stood up, she could not only establish the prosecution's time line
but undermine Frank's claim that he'd been in his office "every minute" be-
tween 12:00 and 12:30 the afternoon of April 26. Dorsey promptly steered
her to the issue at hand:

"Did you go to the factory on the Saturday Mary Phagan was killed?"

"Yes, sir."

"What time?"

"12:05 o'clock."

"How long did you stay?"

"Five minutes."

"What did you go for?"

"To get my pay."

"What floor did you go to?"

"The second."

"To where?"

"To Mr. Frank's office."

"Did you see Mr. Frank?"

"No."

"Did you look at the clock when you went in?"

"Yes. I walked up to it. It was 12:05."

The implications here couldn't have been blunter, and after securing the
seemingly meaningless fact that the girl wore tennis shoes on April 26 and
the recollection that the double doors opening into the metal room had
been ominously shut that day, Dorsey turned her over to the defense.

Rosser did what he could with Monteen. Perhaps, he suggested, she'd
failed to enter the inner chamber where Frank usually worked, stopping
instead in the anteroom. No, she replied, "I went through the first office into
the second." All right then, Rosser rejoined, what did the furniture look
like? The desks? The wardrobe? The girl couldn't recall, but as opposed to
what her interrogator was trying to imply, this inability was not owing to

228 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

heedlessness on her part. As she explained: "I was looking for a person
and didn't notice any of these objects." Monteen was not going to be con-
tradicted, and while Rosser did exact the concession that the metal-
department doors were often shut on off days, he again had little choice but
to retire.

Following the Stover girl was the 18-year-old factory machinist R. P. Bar-
rett. One of those young men who seem both dull and cunning, Barrett had
lived a hard life and, in turn, had been hardened. From Dorsey's vantage,
however, Barrett was the salt of the earth, for he had discovered the evi-
dence upon which the state's theory of where the murder took place rested.
The red stain on the metal room floor, the white stuff smeared atop it— the
solicitor swiftly secured the particulars. Then, rather than ask Barrett to
relate in words how he'd located the accompanying hair samples, Dorsey
handed him pencil and pad and asked him to draw what he'd seen. The
resulting sketch depicted the strands the machinist said had been twined
around his lathe handle, and on its strength, the solicitor took a crack at
connecting those strands to Mary Phagan:

"Did anyone else see the hair?"

"Yes," Barrett responded.

"Was Magnolia Kennedy there?"

"Yes."

"Did she identify the hair?"

Before Barrett could reply, Rosser exploded: "It would be only hearsay.
Only the God of the universe could identify the hair." Roan sustained the
objection, thus the jurors wouldn't hear Magnolia's widely reported asser-
tion that the hair had come from little Mary's head. Not that Dorsey
allowed the setback to slow him down. Betraying no dissatisfaction, he
obtained Barrett's assurance that neither the red stain— which the machin-
ist insisted was blood— nor the hair had been present at quitting time the
Friday before the murder. Then he introduced a new and potentially devas-
tating piece of evidence— a scrap of pay envelope that Barrett claimed he'd
spotted beneath Mary Phagan's machine several days after the killing.
Printed atop the scrap was a partially visible "p" or "g." As Dorsey had
known it would, "State's Exhibit U" rocked the courtroom, providing him
with the perfect ending point.

Once again, Rosser gamely rose to his feet, and while he failed to get
Barrett to back down regarding the red stain ("I could tell it was blood") or
the hair, he did persuade him to concede that the envelope scrap could have

PROSECUTION 229

belonged to anyone. "There is no number or amount on the envelope, no
name on it, just a little loop, a part of a letter." Having exacted that admis-
sion, Rosser then asked the machinist if he'd aided Dorsey in his investiga-
tion. When Barrett all too eagerly answered yes, Rosser returned to the
defense table. He'd done what he could— which wasn't much. According to
the Georgian, "Barrett made probably the best witness the state called dur-
ing the forenoon."

The striking young woman who unexpectedly took a seat among the spec-
tators at the start of Thursday's afternoon session may have been, as she
claimed, another of the Atlantans for whom the trial's allure was irre-
sistible. But this explanation strained credulity. The last time Callie Scott
Applebaum had been in a courtroom, she had herself been on trial for mur-
der. What's more, her highly publicized acquittal had inspired widespread
misgivings regarding the prosecutorial skills of Hugh Dorsey. No, Mrs.
Applebaum, fashionably turned out and professing faith in Frank's inno-
cence, was in the gallery as part of a defense ploy to rattle the solicitor.

That Frank's counsel had resorted to such a tactic was the first indication
that Dorsey had begun to worry them, but the solicitor resfused to be
shaken. Picking up where he'd left off Thursday morning, he spent the day's
remaining hours presenting witnesses who could bolster his contention that
the crime had occurred in the factory metal room. Mel Stanford, a plant
janitor, corroborated Barrett's testimony that neither the red stains nor
the hair discovered the Monday following the murder had been present
the preceding Friday. Dr. Claude Smith, chemist for the city of Atlanta,
resolved any doubts as to the composition of the stains, declaring that
microscopic examination had shown them indeed to be blood. (Smith also
reinforced the state's theory that the shirt found at Newt Lee's house had
been a plant, echoing the view that the garment had been purposely wiped
over a bloody surface.) And Mrs. George Jefferson, a polishing-department
employee, affirmed Detective Starnes's assertion that twine of the sort used
to choke Mary Phagan was stored in the metal room.

The defense had at each of these witnesses, but the only one Luther Rosser
managed to shake was Dr. Smith. During a pointed cross-examination, the
chemist confessed that the tests he'd performed on the wood chipped up
from the metal room floor had yielded but four or five corpuscles of blood of
indeterminate origin. Reported the Journal: "He admitted that the blood
might have been from a mouse."

Smith's revelation regarding the state's blood evidence would not, how-
ever, constitute the only defense triumph during Thursday's waning hours.
As his last witness of the afternoon, Dorsey summoned E. F Holloway, the

230 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

factory's day watchman. In an affidavit taken during the investigation, Hol-
loway had told Detectives Starnes and Campbell that prior to leaving work
the evening before the murder, he had locked the second-floor electric
switch box. The assertion gave the lie to Frank's claim that the box, due to
an insurance company edict, was kept unlocked, and the solicitor expected
Holloway to repeat it. Such testimony would pave the way for the prosecu-
tion's argument that Frank had unlocked the box the day of the crime so
that he and Conley could turn on the elevator and transport Mary Phagan's
body to the basement. Yet when Dorsey posed the question, Holloway
unexpectedly offered a different story, declaring that while he had locked
the box late Friday, he had unlocked it Saturday morning for Denham and
White, the two workmen laboring on the building's top floor, to plug in a
saw.

These setbacks notwithstanding, there can be no doubt that Dorsey had
regained the upper hand. Noted the Georgian: "The state fared better
Thursday than any other day during the trial."

Thursday night, thundershowers drenched Atlanta, cooling and clearing the
air. But the relief lasted only a moment. August had come, and Friday morn-
ing the city awakened to what now seemed its constants— the heat and the
trial. By 8:40, the sweltering building at the corner of Hunter and Pryor
streets was already filled to capacity, as were the coveted perches atop the
adjacent construction sheds.

The day's session opened with Hugh Dorsey testing his luck. Leo Frank's
closest business associate, N. V. Darley, was a reluctant witness. Nonetheless,
the solicitor called the assistant factory superintendent. Dorsey was gam-
bling that he could wrest the sort of admissions from Darley that the man's
loyalties would make all the more devastating.

First, the solicitor wanted corroboration of earlier claims by various wit-
nesses as to Frank's anxiety on the morning Mary Phagan's body was dis-
covered. "Was he done up?" he asked. To this and several similar inquiries,
Darley tendered equivocal responses, making it plain he would rather not
say anything that might incriminate his boss. But Dorsey hammered away,
eventually eliciting the statement: "I could perceive that his whole body
was trembling."

Next, the solicitor wanted support for the prosecution's contention that
the mysterious club located in the National Pencil Company lobby in mid-
May was as much a plant as the bloody shirt found earlier at Newt Lee's
house. After obtaining Darley's acknowledgment that the factory had been
well cleaned in the murder's immediate aftermath, Dorsey turned to the

PROSECUTION 23I

prosecution table, retrieved the club and hurled it to the floor in front of
the witness stand.

"Was any club of this sort turned up during the cleaning?" he demanded.

"No," Darley replied.

"And was not this a thorough cleaning?"

"It was."

With that, the solicitor sat down.

From the moment the affable Reuben Arnold rose to his feet to conduct
his first cross-examination of the trial, it was clear that the defense intended
to make the prosecution pay for having put someone so sympathetic to
Frank on the stand. Mister Rube began by asking Darley if he realized that
both the state's blood and hair evidence had been discovered by "Christo-
pher Columbus Barrett." Understandably, Dorsey objected to this sarcastic
question, but after Arnold explained that he hoped to show Barrett had
been less interested in the truth than in the reward money, Judge Roan
allowed it, and Darley replied: "It is my understanding that Barrett has
been doing most of the discovering done in the building. He has lost quite
some time since the murder, and buys quite some extras and reads them."
Having thereby cast doubt on Barrett's motives, Frank's co-counsel pro-
ceeded to use Darley to attack Barrett's findings themselves. For openers,
there were the spots on the metal room floor. Such spots, the witness stated,
were actually common due to the fact that female workers experiencing the
onset of their menstrual cycles had to walk through the area to reach the
nearest women's restroom, as did injured workers seeking first aid. Then
there were the strands of hair found on Barrett's lathe handle. Declared
Darley: "I don't think there were over 6 or 8. It was pretty hard to tell the
color." Finally, there was the scrap of paper purportedly torn from Mary
Phagan's pay envelope. As Darley described it, the shop was often littered
with such scraps. This because, upon receiving their wages from the nearby
payroll window, employees eagerly ripped open the envelopes, scattering
pieces everywhere.

The assault upon Barrett's discoveries thus completed, Arnold directed
Darley's attention to several other claims the prosecution had adduced as
proof that the crime had been committed in the metal room. According to
Detective John Starnes and Mrs. George Jefferson, twine of the sort that
had been used to choke Mary Phagan and paper of the sort upon which the
murder notes were written could be found chiefly on the plant's second
floor. Yet as assistant superintendent, Darley was better qualified than any-
one to speak to these subjects, and he did, telling the lawyer: "I have seen
these cords that we tie up slats and pencils with in every part of the factory.
I have raised sand about finding them in the basement." Then, after being

232 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

handed one of the murder notes: "Yes, I have seen all kinds of papers down
in the basement. The paper that note is written on is a blank order pad. That
kind of little pad is used all over the factory. The foreladies make their
memorandum on that kind of tablet. They are all over the building."

Had he simply quit, Arnold already would have succeeded in marring
the foundation of Dorsey's case, but Darley's thorough knowledge of plant
operations made him the ideal witness to introduce the defense's con-
tention that Frank's workload on April 26 had been so heavy that he could
never have completed it had he just committed a murder. Hence, Arnold
asked for an account of the tasks Frank normally undertook on Saturday
afternoons, receiving in reply a description of the computations involved in
preparing the weekly production and sales report. "A skillful, clear-headed
man," Darley informed Mister Rube, would need three hours, and as of 9:40
on the morning of the slaying, Frank had not started. Yet upon arriving at
the factory early the next day along with the investigating officers, Darley
said he found the report finished.

By this juncture, Hugh Dorsey realized what was happening, and in a
pained voice asked, "Are you through with him, Mr. Arnold?" But his
opposing number wasn't about to let up, replying, "Oh, no, no. We haven't
got a good start with him yet." Darley was just the man to launch the argu-
ment that the factory elevator was so creaky that if, as Conley had sworn in
his affidavits and was expected to testify, it had been used to take Mary Pha-
gan's remains to the basement, the two workmen laboring upstairs at the
time would have heard it. He was also just the man to debunk the claim that
the metal shop provided a secure place to conduct a tryst or commit a
crime. "There is no lock on the metal room doors," he testified, meaning
that the department's main entry— as opposed to the secondary one de-
picted on the prosecution diagram— could not be secured. Finally, Darley
could credibly advance the thesis that Frank's behavior on the morning
Mary's body was located, far from being suspicious, was typical. Recalling a
day several years before when Frank arrived at work after having seen a
child run over by a streetcar, he told Arnold: "He came in about 2:30 and he
couldn't work any more on his books until a quarter after four. He trem-
bled just as much on that occasion as he did on the Sunday after Mary Pha-
gan was killed."

Mercifully for the state, Judge Roan chose this moment to recess for
lunch, bringing an end to the rout. Upon commencing Friday's afternoon
session, Arnold at last handed Darley back to Dorsey for redirect, but try
as he might, the solicitor could not undo the damage. For all of that, how-
ever, Dorsey did not seem upset about the way things had gone. The wit-
ness had, after all, been a calculated risk. Yet apart from this awareness,
the solicitor had another reason not to agonize. Like a shrewd cardplayer,

PROSECUTION 233

he'd divested himself of most of his weak suits and would finish out the
game dealing trumps.

As soon as Dr. Henry Fauntleroy Harris, medical bag in hand, approached
the witness stand, the crowd inside the packed courtroom tensed. During
the months since Harris supervised the exhumations of Mary Phagan's
body, speculation as to what light science would shine on the crime had only
increased. Save for Jim Conley, no witness was more avidly awaited.

Thin and pale, skin tautly drawn over high cheekbones, rimless specta-
cles camped atop a sharp nose, Harris appeared at once vulnerable and
severe. Which he was. For the past week, he had been suffering from the flu,
and it was with difficulty that he had risen from bed. Yet now that he was
before the jury, he did his best to affect the unassailable posture common to
his profession, at the solicitor's request crisply enumerating his degrees and
honors.

From the outset, Harris did all that Dorsey asked and more, delivering
testimony that not only completed the state's circumstantial case against
Frank but provided solid medical rationales for several points Conley was
expected to make later. Regarding Mary Phagan's badly bruised right eye,
the doctor contended that his examination had shown that the blow causing
the injury had been inflicted before death by a "soft instrument," most
likely a fist. Regarding the jagged wound behind the girl's left ear, he said it,
too, had been suffered while she was alive, most likely when she had fallen
backward into a sharp object. The surrounding tissue had been "shoved
upward slightly," a circumstance that would not have obtained had she been
clubbed. Though Harris believed the traumas were sufficient to have
knocked the child out, he didn't think they killed her. "Strangulation," he
declared, "was beyond a doubt the cause."

Having thus secured support for his theory of where and how the murder
had been committed, Dorsey directed Harris to the question of when. After
obtaining the doctor's acknowledgment that he had examined the dead
girl's stomach and removed 160 cubic centimeters of cabbage and biscuit,
the solicitor asked how far the material had progressed toward digestion.
"Very slightly," replied Harris, reaching into his bag and extracting a vial
that held several pieces of nearly intact cabbage floating in a preservative
medium. "This," he said, "is some of what I removed from the stomach."

As Harris displayed the vial to the jury, Dorsey asked how long the cab-
bage had been in Mary Phagan's system before death. "I am confident,"
answered the doctor, "that it could not have been there for more than half
an hour." While the weight of this assertion— which recalled both Mrs.
Coleman's testimony that her daughter had eaten just past 1 1 a.m. on April

234 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

26 and Monteen Stover's claim that Frank was not in his office at 12:05 —
hung in the air, Harris removed two other vials from his bag. Both were
filled with a pasty, unrecognizable substance. Displaying them to the jury,
the doctor announced that they contained cabbage taken from the stom-
achs of "normal persons" after an hour of digestion. The demonstration
provided the backdrop for Harris's definitive utterance as to the time of
death: "She was either killed or received the blow upon the head thirty or
forty-five minutes after her last meal."

Compelling as all this was, it was Dorsey's succeeding area of inquiry
that electrified the courtroom. The question:

Dr. Harris, did you ever examine the vital organs of Mary Phagan's body?

The answer:

I made an examination of the privates of Mary Phagan. I found no sper-
matozoa. On the walls of the vagina there was evidence of violence of
some kind. The epithelium was pulled loose, completely detached in
places, blood vessels were dilated immediately beneath the surface and
there was a great deal of hemorrhage in the surrounding tissues. The dila-
tion of the blood vessels indicated to me that the injury had been made in
the vagina some little time before death. Perhaps ten to fifteen minutes. It
had occurred before death by reason of the fact that these blood vessels
were dilated. Inflammation had set in and it takes an appreciable length of
time for the process of inflammatory change to begin. There was evidence
of violence in the neighborhood of the hymen.

Though Harris did not spell it out, his testimony clearly conveyed the
state's position— Mary Phagan had suffered some sort of sexual violation
that, while leaving no seminal fluid, constituted rape.

There was, at this juncture,more that Dorsey wanted to explore, but before
he could proceed, Harris, complaining that he was "utterly exhausted,"
abruptly asked to be excused. After receiving the doctor's assurances that he
would return as soon as he was able, Judge Roan assented. At first blush, Har-
ris's departure seemed another setback for the state. But as the solicitor well
knew, the doctor's leavetaking, which denied the defense the chance to get a
timely crack at him, was a gift. As he told the Constitution: "It is perfectly plain
sailing from now on. We have a mass of evidence and it is only a question of
knitting it together."

Dorsey's confidence was borne out by Friday's remaining witnesses.
From Mrs. Arthur White, he secured the information that she had seen an
unidentified Negro lurking in the factory lobby on the day of the murder

PROSECUTION 235

not, as had been initially reported, at noon but around 1 p.m., a time consis-
tent with the claim Conley had made in his first affidavit that this was the
hour Frank had summoned him upstairs to write the murder notes. From
Albert McKnight, whom the bailiffs had finally tracked down, he elicited
the anticipated assertion that not only had Frank not eaten lunch on the
afternoon of the crime but that he'd returned to work after spending just
ten minutes at home. Though Luther Rosser eventually obliged McKnight
to recount a few of the dismaying details relative to the procurement of his
wife's infamous affidavit, the defense was able to do little else with either of
these witnesses.

Determined to build on Friday's victories, Dorsey kicked off Saturday's
half-session by calling Helen Ferguson. Hair neatly plaited into braids that
fell down the back of a white dress adorned by a bow at the neck, this 16-
year-old factory worker was familiar to all who had followed the investiga-
tion. On the morning Mary Phagan's body was discovered, she had informed
Fannie and John W. Coleman that their daughter had been killed. Now she
had been summoned to deliver one of the state's most damaging bits of
information, and the solicitor wasted no time eliciting it.

"Did you see Frank on April 25, the Friday before the murder?" Dorsey
began.

"Yes," Ferguson replied.

"At what time?"

"At about 7 o'clock in the evening."

"What was said?"

"I asked Mr. Frank for Mary Phagan's money."

"Well, what did he say?"

"He told me that I couldn't get it; that Mary would be there Saturday
and she could get it then all right."

"Had you ever got Mary Phagan's money for her before that?"

"Yes, on two occasions."

Though Helen would subsequently tell Luther Rosser that both times she
had picked up Mary's wages she had received them from someone other
than Frank, and while she would admit that on April 25 she had forgotten
her friend's payroll number, possibly explaining Frank's refusal, neither
acknowledgment softened the blow. As she reiterated to the defense lawyer
when he asked her to repeat Frank's response to her request: "He said that
she'd be there Saturday."

Hugh Dorsey next called Dr. J. W. Hurt, the Fulton County medical

236 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

examiner. Though the solicitor fully expected Dr. Harris, once recovered, to
put the finishing touches on the medical portion of his case, he wanted to
reinforce the main points while they were still vivid in the jurors' minds.
Which was what he did, obtaining Hurt's endorsement of Harris's findings
that the wound to the back of Mary Phagan's head had been made by
a "blunt-edged instrument" striking "from down upward," that her right
eye had been blackened by someone's fist and that she had died of strangu-
lation.

Yet much as Hurt helped the state, he would also harm it. As the news-
papers had already reported, he and Dr. Harris were in dispute regarding a
key matter, and rather than let the defense raise it, Dorsey attempted to
defuse the issue by doing so himself, concluding his examination by asking
the doctor if little Mary had been raped. Replied Hurt:

I discovered no violence to the parts. There was blood on the parts. I didn't
know whether it was fresh blood or menstrual blood. The vagina was a lit-
tle larger than the normal size of a girl that age. It is my opinion that this
enlargement of the vagina could have been produced by penetration
immediately preceding death.

Frank's lawyers, of course, would have preferred to secure Hurt's uncer-
tain answer to this vital question themselves, but despite the prosecution's
effort to pull the sting, they were not about to leave it alone. Indeed,
Reuben Arnold, whose hiring had been in part predicated on his medical
knowledge, sharply cross-examined the doctor on the issue. Ever so deli-
cately, Mister Rube posed a series of questions designed to suggest that lit-
tle Mary, contrary to widely held and deeply felt convictions, had not been a
virgin. Eventually, the doctor confided: "Her hymen was not intact, and I
was not able to say when it was ruptured. I saw no indication of injury to the
hymen."

Arnold wrapped up by directing Hurt's attention to one other critical
topic— the wound on the back of Mary Phagan's head. As the doctor now
acknowledged, the wound had not necessarily been inflicted by a fall against
Barrett's lathe. It could as easily have been suffered during a tumble down
the factory elevator shaft.

During his redirect examination of Hurt, Hugh Dorsey had every inten-
tion of putting the pieces back together again, but he was almost denied the
chance, for it was at this pass, following a brief recess, that the trial of Leo
Frank nearly ended. As spectators were settling down and lawyers were
huddling, Judge Roan emerged from his chambers carrying the Georgian's
latest extra. Blared the red banner: state adds links to chain. When
Reuben Arnold noticed jurors not only reading the headline but craning

PROSECUTION 237

their necks to make out the underlying story, which detailed the prosecu-
tion's late-Friday triumphs, he and Rosser approached the bench. Roan,
upon being informed of what had occurred, ordered the twelve-man panel
from the room.

The debate over whether a mistrial should be declared raged until
Frank's lawyers, revealing that they expected to prevail in the present pro-
ceedings, announced they would be satisfied if Roan simply instructed the
jury, as Rosser put it, "to disregard this headline." Though Dorsey coun-
tered that no admonition was necessary, maintaining that the panel had
been previously exposed to newspaper coverage damaging to the state, the
judge seized upon the defense's proposal. After recalling the jurors, he
advised:

Gentlemen, it has been said by some that you have been able to see some
writings or headlines in the newspapers that might influence you. If you
have seen anything in the newspapers or heard anything, I beg of you now
to free your mind of it, regardless of whether it be helpful to the state or to
the defense.

The crisis thereby averted, Hurt returned to the stand and Dorsey went
back to work, quickly extracting statements that negated some of what
Arnold had accomplished during his cross-examination. Yet for all intents
and purposes, the argument sparked by Judge Roan's indiscretion had
brought the day's abbreviated session to a conclusion. The first week was
over.

Late Saturday, as Hugh Dorsey plotted strategy in his Thrower Building
office and Leo Frank rested in his cell, police officers escorted Jim Conley
into a secluded courtyard behind the station house where, as the Constitu-
tion's Britt Craig put it, they "turned a liberal hose" on him until he was as
"shiny as the brass trimmings on a 19 14 model auto." Then, courtesy of
William Smith, the Negro was treated to a haircut and a shave. Finally, he
was outfitted with a new suit of clothes and a pair of dress shoes.

Conley's turn on the stand was at hand, and if anything, it was regarded
as more critical to the trial's outcome than ever. To be sure, the prosecution
had by this juncture presented a mass of circumstantial evidence against
Frank. Even the Georgian's James B. Nevin, in a summary of events to date,
conceded as much:

The State HAS definitely shown that Leo Frank might have murdered
Mary Phagan and that he DID have the opportunity to accomplish it.

238 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Having shown that the OPPORTUNITY was there, and that the mur-
der likely was consummated during the time limits of that opportunity, the
elements of the case need but be knitted properly together to make dark
the outlook for Frank.

Yet the defense had badly roughed up several of Dorsey's witnesses. More-
over, Frank had not been connected to Mary Phagan in anything other than
a cursory fashion. The issues at the heart of the matter remained unre-
solved. Looking ahead to when court reconvened, the Georgian declared:

The questions to be thrashed out are these:

Did Leo Frank, between 12 o'clock and the time he left the pencil fac-
tory, after paying Mary Phagan her pittance of wages, lure or follow her
into the back of the second floor, there assault her and kill her? Did he
then secure the services of Jim Conley to conceal the body?

Or did Jim Conley, half drunk, loitering in the dark hallway below, see-
ing little Mary Phagan coming down the steps with her mesh bag in her
hands, brooding over his lack of funds wherewith to get more whisky, find
in this setup an opportunity to secure a little money— the violent killing of
the girl following?

About Conley— ever and always about Conley— the Frank case re-
volves, and will revolve until it ends.

Would-be spectators began arriving at the old city hall at 6:30 Monday
morning, and by 9:00 the line stretched single file down Hunter Street to the
state capitol a quarter mile to the east. The scene, noted the Journal, was
reminiscent of that before a World Series baseball game. Shortly after
the 250 available seats had been allotted, Hugh Dorsey cried, "Bring in
Jim Conley." The request sparked a smattering of applause, but deputies
quickly restored order, and following a brief delay, Chiefs Lanford and
Beavers led the Negro into the courtroom, William Smith bringing up the
rear. As Conley passed the defense table, he gazed evenly at Frank, who
returned the gaze in kind. Once the witness was seated and sworn, Dorsey
went right to work.

"Do you know Leo Frank?" the solicitor asked.

"Yes, I know him. There he is," Conley replied, indicating the bespecta-
cled figure who sat between his wife and mother ten feet away. At this,
Frank turned to Lucille and whispered a few reassuring words.

"Did you have any conversation with Mr. Frank on Friday, April 25?"
Dorsey continued.

PROSECUTION 239

"Yes, sir," Conley answered. "About three o'clock, Mr. Frank come to
the fourth floor where I was working and said he wanted me to come to the
pencil factory on Saturday morning at 8:30."

"Had you ever been back there before on Saturdays?"

"Yes, sir. Several times."

"How often?"

Immediately, Rosser objected. The subject, he said, was immaterial.
Roan concurred, and the solicitor returned to the Saturday in question.

"Who got there first? You or Mr. Frank?"

"We met at the door and I followed him in."

"What conversation did you have?"

"Mr. Frank said that I was a little early. I told him it was the time he'd
said for me to come. He said I was a little too early for what he wanted me
to do. I asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted me to watch for him
like I had on other Saturdays."

"What had you been doing on other Saturdays?" Dorsey asked.

Again, Rosser objected, but this time Roan overruled him and Conley
responded, "I had watched for him while he was upstairs talking to young
ladies."

Lest anyone miss the point, Dorsey demanded a description of the job's
responsibilities.

"I would sit down at the first floor and watch the door for him," Conley
replied.

"How often had you done this?"

"Several times."

"Was Frank up there alone on those Saturdays?"

"No, sometimes there 'd be two young ladies and another young man. A
lady for him and one for Mr. Frank."

"Was Mr. Frank ever alone there?"

"Yes, sir. Last Thanksgiving day."

"Who came then?"

"A tall, heavy-built woman."

Having thus managed not only to introduce the first strong whiff of sex-
ual impropriety but to suggest a pattern of relevant past dealings between
Frank and his accuser, Dorsey steered the examination back to the Satur-
day of the murder. According to Conley, upon being told that he'd arrived
ahead of schedule, he asked the superintendent for permission to visit his
mother at the Capital City Laundry. The understanding, he said, was that
later that morning, he and Frank, who also had some outside business,
would meet on a prearranged street corner opposite the Montag Paper

240 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Company. This, he added, they did, whereupon the two returned to work,
the superintendent walking so briskly that he nearly bowled over a man
carrying a baby.

"Now, when you got to the factory," Dorsey asked, "what happened?"

Here, Conley pivoted toward the jury and exhibiting the polish he'd
acquired under Smith's tutelage (Jim spoke "with the voice of a young
teacher of elocution," noted the Journal) unburdened himself of his story's
most critical details. "We went in," he began, "and Mr. Frank told me about
the lock on the front door. 'If you turn the knob this way, nobody can get in,'
he said. Then, Mr. Frank told me to come over and said, 'Set on this box.' He
said there'd be a young lady up here pretty soon and 'We want to chat
awhile.' Mr. Frank said, 'When I stomp, that's her, and you go shut the door.
And when I whistle, you can go and unlock the door and come up and say
you want to borrow some money and that will give her a chance to get out.' "

Conley's positioning the morning of the crime thereby established,
Dorsey asked him to name the people who'd subsequently entered and
exited the building, and he did, mentioning Assistant Superintendent Dar-
ley, the factory employee Mattie Smith, a "peg-legged" Negro drayman, an
unidentified woman who worked on the plant's fourth floor, watchman
Holloway and Lemmie Quinn. Then he said: "The next person I saw was
Miss Mary Perkins. She came in and went upstairs."

"Who is Miss Mary Perkins?" Dorsey inquired.

"That's the lady that's dead," Conley answered, revealing for the first
time that he'd seen the victim alive the day of her murder. "I heard her foot-
steps going toward the front of the office, and then I heard steps going
toward the metal room. The next thing I heard was her screaming."

"Then what did you hear?" asked the solicitor.

"I didn't hear anymore."

As Conley related these assertions, Frank continued to exhibit little
emotion, but neither of the women at his side could conceal their feelings.
Lucille bowed her head as if she'd absorbed a blow, while his mother gazed
up, in the Georgian's phrase, "with an expression of pathetic pleading at the
negro witness."

There would, however, be no relief. For starters, Conley informed the
court that the next person he saw pass through the lobby was Monteen
Stover. When asked how she was dressed, he confirmed what the girl had
herself testified, replying, "She was wearing tennis shoes and a raincoat."
Conley then told of Monteen's departure, which was followed, he said,
by the sound of "tiptoes coming from the metal department" and, after a
brief pause, "tiptoes running back" toward the same place. Once the noise
ceased, Conley added, he had fallen asleep, not awakening until "I heard
Mr. Frank stomping over my head."

PROSECUTION 241

"Then what happened?" asked Dorsey.

"I heard Mr. Frank whistle."

"Well, what did you do when you heard Mr. Frank whistle?"

"I unlocked the door just like he said and went upstairs. Mr. Frank was
standing at the head of the stairs shivering. He was rubbing his hands
together and acting funny."

"Show the jury how he was acting."

Evincing the same skill for charades with which he'd captivated re-
porters during his tour of the pencil factory two months earlier, Conley
bounced to his feet, knees knocking, arms shaking. Then he sat back down,
and Dorsey resumed.

"What did Frank have?"

"He had a little cord in his hands— a long wide piece of cord."

"Did you look at his eyes?"

"Yes, sir."

"How did they look?"

"His eyes was large. They looked funny and wild."

"Did Frank say anything to you?"

"Yes, sir, he asked me if I saw a little girl pass along up there. I told him
yes, I saw two but one went out; but that I didn't see the other come out."

"Well, then what did Frank say?" Dorsey asked. The question was no dif-
ferent than those that had preceded it, but it elicited an answer unlike any
thus far:

He says, "Well, that one you say didn't come back down, she came into
my office a while ago and wanted to know something about her work and I
went back there to see if the little girl's work had come, and I wanted to be
with the little girl, and she refused me, and I struck her and I guess I struck
her too hard and she fell and hit her head against something, and I don't
know how bad she got hurt. Of course, you know I ain't built like other
men." The reason he said that was, I had seen him in a position I haven't
seen any other man that has got children. I have seen him in the office two
or three times before Thanksgiving and a lady was in his office, and she was
sitting down in a chair and she had her clothes up to here, and he was down
on his knees, and she had her hands on Mr. Frank. I have seen him another
time there in the packing room with a young lady lying on the table, she
was on the edge of the table when I saw her.

With that, Conley had gone further than he had in any of his affidavits,
flatly asserting what had previously been merely intimated— namely, that
Frank had pursued Mary Phagan sexually, killing her when she resisted his
advances. Even more damning, however, were his allegations regarding the

242 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

factory superintendent's sexual preferences. To accuse Frank of attempted
rape and murder was bad enough, but to imply that due to some unspecified
physical abnormality he had tried to perform what most Atlantans would
have considered an act of perversion and what Georgia law regarded as the
capital offense of oral sodomy was devastating. Spectators and jurors, noted
the Georgian, "strained forward in their seats," while reporters silently
speculated as to why the defense did not object to the new and by every
legal standard inadmissible charge. "Apparently," concluded the Constitu-
tion, "they were willing for him to go the limit, depending on breaking him
down later and discrediting the whole story."

Dorsey now initiated a line of questioning designed to elicit the well-
known but essential guts of Conley's story. The sight of little Mary lying
dead outside the factory metal room, the bundling up of the body, the toting
of the awkward load the length of the building, the help ultimately lent by
Frank— to all of these things did the Negro attest. So, too, did he reaffirm
other critical elements of his tale, among them those concerning the trans-
portation of the remains to the basement, the return trip to the second floor
(complete with a description of Frank's fall when exiting the elevator)
and the sweaty minutes he claimed to have spent closeted in the office
wardrobe during the unexpected visit by Emma Clark and Corinthia Hall.

The final matters to which Dorsey directed Conley's attention involved
Frank's alleged attempt to cover up the crime. Much of this material—
particularly as it related to the composition of the murder notes— was also
familiar, but the Negro did illuminate several murky points. Regarding the
origination of the scheme, he asserted: "Mr. Frank says, T can tell you the
best way for us to get out of this. You write what I tell you.' " As to why he
cooperated, he declared: "I was willing to do anything to help Mr. Frank,
him being a white man and my superintendent, too." Yet a desire to accom-
modate his boss was not Conley's sole motivation. Profit was also a factor,
and he took this occasion to provide a fuller account of the cash offer Frank
purportedly made only to withdraw later. The $200 payment, the Negro
claimed, was contingent not just on his penning the notes but on his per-
forming one more task— burning the body. The prospect, however, terrified
him. "I was scared and I told Mr. Frank to come down with me and watch,"
he testified. "Mr. Frank said he couldn't go down there, and then Mr. Frank
said to hand him that money. Ts that the way you are going to do me?' I
asked Mr. Frank and he said, 'You just keep your mouth shut.' " According
to Conley, it was shortly after shushing him that Frank looked to the ceiling
and exclaimed: "Why should I hang? I have wealthy people in Brooklyn."
And it was shortly after making this statement, the Negro added, that the
superintendent once again beseeched him to help dispose of the remains.
" 'Can you come back this evening and do it?' " he said Frank asked, prom-

PROSECUTION 243

ising: " 'I will fix the money.' " Conley confessed that he agreed to the
request the second time around, but he said that upon leaving the factory,
he went to a saloon and drank a doubleheader, then stumbled home and
fell asleep. As to how the murder notes ended up beside the body, he main-
tained ignorance. He said he next saw his boss three days later at work. "He
walked up and said, 'Now remember, keep your mouth shut,' and I said, 'All
right,' and he said, 'If you'd come back on Saturday and done what I told
you to do with it down there, there wouldn't have been no trouble.' "

On that line, Dorsey might have ended, yet in order to ensure that the
jurors could visualize Conley's story, he instructed the Negro to indicate
various important spots on Bert Green's factory diagram. Then, sending the
first signal that he would call witnesses to support Conley's claims regard-
ing Frank's sexual misconduct, he asked the Negro to name the woman
who'd been in the superintendent's office on Thanksgiving 1912. Conley
responded that he could not remember, but when the solicitor followed up
by asking him to identify the man who'd joined Frank for several of his
other purported trysts, the Negro replied: "Mr. Dalton." Shortly thereafter,
Dorsey returned to his seat.

Just how well Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold comprehended the enor-
mity of the job confronting them was evidenced by the fact that rather than
launch directly into Jim Conley's cross-examination, they requested a recess
and retired to an anteroom to discuss strategy. As everyone who had heard
his narrative understood, Conley would not be easily broken down. "The
negro forgot nothing, omitted nothing that he had told before," observed
the Georgian. "He never was confused." Yet this is not to say that his latest
version of events was regarded as unassailable. Several of the very factors
that had made the account gripping raised doubts as to its veracity. "Jim's
story was so completely at the tip of his tongue— even the minutest things—
that his testimony had a recitative air," reported the Journal, echoing a mis-
giving that had met earlier tellings. Then there were the many details that
had not appeared in what had heretofore been viewed as Conley's definitive
utterance— his last affidavit. Finally, however, there was the overarching
issue of race. "Jim Conley has upset traditions of the South," declared the
Georgian's Fuzzy Woodruff. "A white man is on trial. His life hangs on the
words of a negro. And the South listens to the negro's words. But the South
has not thus suddenly forgotten the fact that negro evidence is as slight as
tissue paper. The South has not forgotten that when a white man's word is
brought against a negro's word, there is no question as to the winner." All of
which explains why when Frank's lawyers returned, Hugh Dorsey could be
seen shifting nervously in his chair.

244 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Luther Rosser began by gently querying Conley regarding his personal
and job history. After obtaining a few unremarkable particulars, the lawyer
shifted to the topic of the Negro's education. When Jim claimed to be not
much of a reader ("I can't read the newspapers good," he said), the big man
merely grinned.

"You can make out some words in the newspaper, can't you?"

"Yes, sir, little words like 'dis' and 'dat.' "

"You can spell 'dis' and 'dat,' can't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Can you spell 'cat'?"

"Yes, sir, I can spell that word."

"Well, how do you spell it, with a 'c' or a 'k'?"

"With a 'k.'"

"Why, sure you do." Rosser beamed, ignoring the gallery's titters. "Jim,
you and I understand each other thoroughly, don't we?"

"Yes, sir, we sho' does, sir," Conley replied, although his expression sug-
gested differently. But what was lost on him was not lost on others. Noted
the Constitution:

Wise lawyers in the courtroom saw what was coming. They realized that
Mr. Rosser was reaching out for Jim like a small boy does for a dog he
wants to get his hands on when the dog is rather shy and refuses to let him-
self be approached.

Like the boy who stoops down and chirps at the dog and shows friend-
ship on his face, the shrewd lawyer [was] conspiring to get his hands on the
witness.

The defense had decided to flatter and encourage Conley, hoping that his
natural gregariousness— the trait that had always worried Dorsey and
Smith— would, over time, lead him to incriminate himself.

Patiently, then, the ordinarily impatient Rosser wooed Conley, and in
short order, he achieved some impressive results, ascertaining several facts
the state had hoped would not surface. For one, the Negro admitted that
despite earning a steady salary, he was often in debt. For another, he
revealed that to escape the creditors who routinely gathered around the
pencil factory on payday, he frequently departed through the basement
door. The wobbly circumstances of Conley's financial life were, of course,
vital to the defense's theory of the crime. So, too, was the news that he used
the plant's rear exit to make getaways.

Yet promising as this approach initially seemed, the defense was taking a
risk. While the Negro might implicate himself, he almost certainly would

PROSECUTION 245

further implicate Frank. Though Rosser was aware of the danger, he hadn't
anticipated how quickly he would encounter it. Following a few more ques-
tions regarding various aspects of Conley's employment, the lawyer raised
the topic of the extracurricular duties Jim claimed to have performed for
Frank, asking: "When was the first time you watched for him?"

"July," Conley matter-of-factly replied.

"Was a lady with him?"

"Yes, Miss Daisy Hopkins."

"What time was it they came that first time?"

"About 3:00 or 3:30 in the afternoon."

"What were you doing?"

"I was sweeping when they came in but Mr. Frank called me to his office
and asked me if I wanted to make some money, and then he told me to
watch the door for him. I went down and watched, and pretty soon the
other lady came with Mr. Dalton. They came upstairs to Mr. Frank's office,
stayed there ten or fifteen minutes. They came back down and went into the
basement. I don't know how long they stayed [but] Mr. Dalton went out
laughing and the lady went up the steps. Then the ladies came down and
left, and then Mr. Frank came down. He gave me a quarter and I left."

Hugh Dorsey hardly could have scripted an exchange more injurious to
Frank. In a matter of seconds, Conley —by providing the name of one of the
superintendent's alleged strumpets— had significantly bolstered the state's
case. But Rosser stuck to his course, hoping that the Negro would eventu-
ally trip and fall. In the same amiable tone, he continued to quiz Conley
regarding his further experiences as Frank's lookout. The results, however,
didn't change. On a subsequent Saturday, Jim said, Frank and Daisy had
met alone in the office. His tip was 50 cents. Then there was Thanksgiving,
which marked the visit of the aforementioned heavy-built woman. Conley
couldn't recall her name, but he did provide a vivid description:

The lady had on a blue skirt with white dots on it and white slippers and
white stockings and had a gray tailor-made coat with pieces of velvet on
the edges.

He also recalled the amount of his tip — $ 1 .25 — and with abundant pride, he
recited the compliment he claimed Frank paid him in this elegant creature's
presence:

After the lady came down, she said to Mr. Frank, "Is that the nigger?" And
Mr. Frank said, "Yes," and she said, "Well, does he talk much?" And he
says, "No, he is the best nigger I have ever seen."

246 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

And so the remainder of this Monday morning went, right up to 12:35 when
court recessed for lunch. During the break, Leo Frank informed friends that
his accuser's story was "the vilest and most amazing pack of lies ever con-
ceived in the perverted brain of a wicked human being," and he expressed
every confidence that Rosser would soon demonstrate as much. Others,
though, were not so sure. Observed the Georgian's James B. Nevin:

The crossing of Conley, upon which this case unquestionably will turn,
will be either Rosser's victory or Rosser's defeat.

Moments before the proceedings reconvened Monday afternoon, Judge
Leonard Roan startled the gallery by ordering all women from the court-
room, the sole exceptions being Frank's wife and mother. "I am doing this,"
Roan said, "on account of the character of the evidence"— meaning, of
course, that he believed Conley's testimony was unfit for female ears.
Understandably, the 175 spectators at whom the edict was directed reacted
angrily. Flashes of resentment darkened the faces of grandmothers, middle-
aged housewives, chorus girls, even, according to the Constitution's Britt
Craig, "a painted-cheek girl with hollow eyes who bore the unmistakable
stain of crimson." But despite the smoldering looks, no one voiced a protest.
Soon enough, the seats that had been occupied by members of the fairer sex
were filled by men, and the trial got back under way.

From the instant Luther Rosser, having learned that Conley spent his
lunch hour with William Smith and Detectives Starnes and Campbell,
snorted that the group probably devoted more time to rehearsing stories
than eating, it was plain he was through making nice. Gone were the helpful
nods and pleasant smiles. Moreover, rather than merely ask the Negro for
additional instances when he had served as Frank's lookout, the lawyer tried
to pin him down to exact dates, hoping to catch him in a lie. Yet here again,
Conley defied expectations; his powers of recall, so acute prior to the break,
abruptly vanished. Questioned as to how he'd occupied himself the Satur-
day before first watching for Frank, he said he didn't recollect. Questioned
as to the Saturday afterward, he said the same thing. And so on and so forth
until finally, following seven similarly fruitless forays, Rosser barked: "You
don't remember any of these dates, Jim?"

"No, sir," Conley replied, only too happy to agree with his inquisitor.

Worrisome as Conley's sudden forgetfulness was to the defense, his ap-
parently inexhaustible glibness engendered even greater concern, for far
from wilting under Rosser's newfound aggressiveness, he seemed to bloom.
Pressed about his past, he unabashedly confirmed that he'd been frequently
incarcerated and was a heavy drinker. Grilled as to when he'd initially spo-
ken with Frank other than on business, he calmly related a history of "jok-

PROSECUTION 247

ing" and "jollying" around the factory, asserting that the superintendent
would often "goose" him. Then there was more regarding Daisy Hopkins.

"Do you know where she lives?" demanded Rosser.

"No, sir."

"Is she married?"

"I don't know."

"What's the color of her hair?"

"Don't remember."

"What's the color of her complexion?"

"What's 'complexion'?"

"You're dark complected— I'm white complected."

"Oh, she was white complected."

"What kind of ears did she have?"

"Ears like folks."

"I didn't expect her to have ears like a rabbit," Rosser snapped, putting
an end to this absurd volley but also betraying a first sign of frustration.
Shortly thereafter, the defense, anxious to regroup, sought another recess.

As Luther Rosser reapproached the witness stand, he held before him a
sheaf of typewritten documents. Jim Conley's four affidavits— starting with
the one of May 18, in which he falsely claimed not to have visited the
National Pencil Factory on the day of Mary Phagan's murder— composed
the text from which the defense would work for the rest of the afternoon.
The intention was to confront the Negro with the statements' many fabrica-
tions.

"At police headquarters," Rosser began, glancing over the first of the
documents, "you told Black and Scott that you got up at 9:30 on the morn-
ing of the 26th, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir," replied Conley.

"That wasn't so, was it?"

"No."

"You lied, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"You told them you left home that morning about 10:00. That wasn't
true, was it?"

"No, sir."

"The truth is, you lied all the way 'round?"

"I told some stories, I'll admit."

"Didn't you tell Black and Scott that you bought half a pint of whisky
on Peters Street at 10:00?"

248 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"No, sir. I told Mr. Black about 10:30."

"Well, that was not so, was it?"

"No, sir."

"Didn't you tell them that after you bought some liquor at 11:00 you
went to some other saloon?"

"I don't remember saying anything about 11:00, but I told them I went
to Earley's Saloon."

"Well, didn't you tell them you went to the Butt-In Saloon after that?"

"Yes."

"Then you told some things that were not true, did you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you look them straight in the face and lie?"

"No, sir. I hung my head."

There was just one more thing Rosser wanted to know about that initial
statement: "Didn't you tell Black and Scott some things that were true and
some that were not?"

Yes, Conley replied mildly, he'd done exactly that. Then, throwing a
punch his adversary did not expect, he added: "I didn't want to give Mr.
Frank away [so] I held back some of the truth, but I wanted to tell some and
let him see what I was going to do and see if he wasn't going to stick to his
promise as he had said."

Rosser tried not to flinch. "Oh, well," he said lightly, "we'll get to that
later on." But he was plainly stunned. He had allowed Conley to articulate
the state's rationale for the mendacities that marred both the first affidavit
and all the others. Now there was little choice but to slug it out. Which was
what he attempted to do, pummeling Conley with a series of derisive
queries about his May 18 session with the detectives. "Did you look 'em in
the eye?" he snarled. "Did you hang your head?" Then, finally: "Jim, what
are some of your other lying habits?" To all of this, the Negro could do no
more than state: "Sometimes, I played with my fingers."

The damage thus papered over, Rosser turned to Hugh Dorsey and
boasted: "You've had your day. Now, I'm going to have mine." Then he
turned back to Conley, asking: "Tell me why it was you sent for Black
on May 24?" What Rosser was hoping to hear was the Negro's account
of the genesis of his second statement, the one in which he revealed how
he'd taken down the murder notes. But again, Conley caught the lawyer
unawares, replying: "Well, I wanted to tell something. I hadn't heard from
Mr.F "

This time, Rosser was quicker to cover up, cutting Conley off before he
could finish, and immediately, Dorsey was on his feet. "The witness has a
right to explain his answers," he objected. "He said he had heard nothing

PROSECUTION 249

from Frank and he was waiting for some word." Judge Roan, however,
overruled this solicitor, and a shaken Rosser returned to his original topic
of interest.

The details attendant to the creation of Conley's May 24 affidavit were
crucial to Leo Frank's cause. This document had enabled the police to link
the superintendent to the murder notes. In a sense, the prosecution's entire
case flowed from it. Yet here, too, the defense was handed a setback, for no
sooner did Rosser get started than the Negro once more lapsed into deep
forgetfulness. Following another litany of "I don't remembers," his nemesis
wearily remarked, "Jim, you've got a poor memory." And that, essentially,
brought Monday's proceedings to a close, although before court adjourned
for the evening, the defense did accomplish something it had long advo-
cated, convincing Judge Roan to transfer Conley back to the Tower. Con-
sidering all that had transpired during the months since the Negro was
placed in police custody, the move seemed too late to make any difference,
although not everyone thought so. "This man, as your honor knows, has
been through a most severe ordeal," protested William Smith, fearful of
what might befall his client at the county facility. In response, Sheriff
Wheeler Mangum, who happened to be present, promised Roan that Con-
ley would be well treated. But Smith was not so sure. "Isn't it true," he
asked, "that Mr. Frank has additional food served to him?" With that,
Rosser had endured enough. "You send him something extra if you want
him to have it," he bellowed. "That's what I want to do," answered Smith.
Which was why as darkness fell on this hot August evening, Conley found
himself not only sitting down to a steak supper courtesy his lawyer but
in receipt of an exceedingly personal gift from him— a crisp new pair of
undershorts to replace the ones he'd sweated through on the stand.

Tuesday morning began much as Monday had ended. Confronted by Ros-
ser with his May 28 declaration that on the day of the crime he'd eaten a
leisurely breakfast at home— an assertion his direct testimony contra-
dicted— Conley readily conceded that the initial story was untrue. Asked to
recollect an incident he'd sworn to in another of his statements, he cited his
weak memory. Pushed to account for his exceeding forgetfulness during the
cross-exam thus far, he explained: "When I told a lie I knew it wouldn't fit
and I'd have to change it, so I didn't remember much about it." Within an
hour, Conley had admitted to a multitude of falsehoods and a dozen times
claimed lapses in recall— none of which tarnished his major allegations.

Though Rosser's anger was increasingly evident ("Don't you know a
nigger never had sausage on the table without eating it?" he snapped dur-
ing the exchanges regarding the witness's murder-day repast), so, too, was a

250 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

new strategy. Where on Monday, the defense's lead counsel had addressed
Conley's affidavits one at a time, he would now shift abruptly among not
just all four of them but also the trial record in an attempt to grind Jim up in
his own widely divergent and still-evolving narratives. "I'm going to see if
he can tell the same lie twice," the lawyer remarked in response to Hugh
Dorsey's unsuccessful objection to the tactic.

At first, Rosser's change of approach seemed effective. The sequence
of events that had brought Conley and Leo Frank together on April 26,
the amount of time he'd subsequently waited for Frank outside the Mon-
tag Paper Company, Frank's description of the task at hand— about each
of these matters Jim gave (or acknowledged having given) conflicting
accounts. Yet despite such minor stumbles, the Negro refused to be either
entangled or flustered. Sometimes defiant, sometimes mocking, occasion-
ally even bored, Conley seemed to have taken Rosser's measure. And on
those occasions when the lawyer appeared to have found an opening, the
Negro shut him down by employing what would eventually be regarded as
a signature phrase:

"Jim, all these lies— I won't call them lies; I'll call them stories— did you
notice them before you went to jail or afterwards?"
"I disremember."

"Jim, to whom did you make your first change in your confession?"
"I disremember."
"You disremember a whole lot, don't you?"

To which Conley said nothing, although shortly thereafter, during a
sifting of one of his other utterances, he gave the same answer: "I disre-
member."

By 11:00, it was plain that Rosser was not only never going to undo his
quarry in this way but that if he stuck with the strategy any longer he'd
lose the sole audience that counted. Reported the Georgian: "During Mr.
Rosser's questioning, a number of the members of the jury were inatten-
tive." Thus it was that as noon approached, Rosser resumed a more conven-
tional line of attack, zeroing in on several improbable points in Conley's
direct testimony concerning the actions he and Frank had purportedly
undertaken at the factory during the minutes just before and just after Mary
Phagan's murder:

"You said yesterday that Frank showed you that day how to unlock the
door, didn't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, hadn't he showed you before?"

PROSECUTION 25I

"Yes, on Thanksgiving day."
"Well, why did he do it again?"
"I don't know."

Similarly:

"You say he told you he was going to stamp on the floor and when you
heard him whistle to unlock the door and come upstairs?"

"Yes, sir, he told me that after he told me to sit down on the box."
"He had told you about these signals before, hadn't he?"
"Yes, sir, on Thanksgiving."
"Why did he repeat it?"
"I don't know, sir."

Yet once more, the forward momentum of Frank's counsel was short-lived,
for on the larger issues, Conley would not be shaken. Indeed, his answers to
Rosser's succeeding questions were essentially verbatim to those he'd given
Dorsey. How did Frank look in the crime's immediate aftermath? "He had
a cord and was trembling." What did he say? "He asked me if I saw that lit-
tle girl come up here a while ago, and I told him yes, sir. I saw two of them
come up and I saw only one go out. He said, 'Uh, huh. That little girl that
didn't go out came up to the office. She went back to the metal room to see
about some work. I went back there with her. I wanted to be with her and
she refused me.' " Just that quickly, Conley had reiterated some of his most
damaging assertions. Worse, he had lost none of his brashness. After direct-
ing the Negro to his rendition of the disposal of little Mary's body, Rosser
asked:

"You got some burlap, didn't you?"
"Yes, sir."

"How big a piece?"
"Well it was longer than me."
"How wide was it— about two feet?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Well, what do you call two feet?"

"This is what I call two feet," cried Jim, putting the toe of his right shoe
against the heel of his left and lifting them high off the floor.

The sight of Conley thrusting his feet in his interrogator's face prompted
laughter throughout the gallery. Once order was restored, court adjourned

252 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

for lunch, concluding the morning on what for the defense was an igno-
minious note symbolizing the futility of its entire enterprise. Observed the
Journal:

When a recess was ordered, Jim Conley had been [under] cross-
examination for eight hours. Beyond showing to the jury that the negro
had lied in the several affidavits given by him to the police and that by
his own admission he had drunk a mixture of wine and beer on the morn-
ing that Mary Phagan was murdered, Luther Z. Rosser had made little
progress. Questions hurled at [the witness] with a view to trapping him
were without effect.

Shortly after court reconvened Tuesday afternoon, Judge Roan, acting at
the defense's request, ordered the jury out, allowing Reuben Arnold to
introduce an audacious motion that indicated he and Luther Rosser now
despaired of breaking down the most inflammatory parts of Jim Conley's
story. "We move first," declared Mister Rube after citing grounds of irrele-
vancy, "to exclude the testimony of Conley relative to watching for the
defendant, and we withdraw our cross-examination on the subject."

"We also desire to withdraw from the record," Arnold added after glanc-
ing at a section of transcript and citing the same grounds, "that part of Con-
ley's statement in which he tells of Frank having told him that 'he was not
built like other men.' " The lawyer then began to quote the pertinent pas-
sages, but after uttering just a few words, he noticed that Lucille Frank,
dreading what was to come, had started to cry, and he stopped. "Your
honor," he said, indicating Frank's wife and mother with his hand, "I would
prefer not to read this in the presence of these two ladies, and I therefore
pass it to your honor that you may read it in silence."

For the next few moments, the courtroom was inordinately quiet. Yet
once the judge looked up, the battle was loudly and contentiously joined,
for as each side understood, the trial's outcome could very well hinge on
who prevailed here.

From the state's perspective, Conley's account of having stood guard for
Frank and his description of what he'd witnessed while doing so was any-
thing but irrelevant, and right off the bat, Hugh Dorsey emphasized the
point:

The value of this evidence certainly is apparent to your honor. This evi-
dence in all manner will be amply corroborated. This evidence goes to
show who killed little Mary Phagan. Our case if this evidence is expunged
will have been done inestimable damage.

PROSECUTION 253

That said, the solicitor turned to the legal issue at hand. Yes, he conceded, as
"an original proposition," the testimony in question probably was inadmis-
sible. But, he added pointedly, by failing to make "a timely plea," by, in fact,
cross-examining Conley on the self-same testimony, the defense had for-
feited the right to seek its removal. "Is it just," an indignant Dorsey asked in
conclusion, "to let these men give this negro a gruelling examination and,
after they have thrashed it out, to let them expunge his statement? Has it
come to this?"

Such was the force of Dorsey's argument that Reuben Arnold immedi-
ately attempted to turn it right back around:

There is no use in getting wrought up over this matter. I could, if I
wanted to, tear up a little turf myself. The person who is hurt is the defen-
dant. He is done grievous injury by this vile evidence.

Then Arnold called attention to the underlying weakness in the solicitor's
logic:

The state admits that it is illegal evidence. The only ground that they
want it retained on is that we didn't make timely objection. In a criminal
case, you can never try a man but for one crime. That is the old, Anglo-
Saxon way. I am coming under a general rule when I say this ought to be
ruled out.

And so the question was framed, but any prospect of a speedy resolution
was quickly dispelled. "I will reserve my decision until I thoroughly con-
sider" both positions, Judge Roan announced from the bench, whereupon
the jury was returned.

Though the gallery and a raptly attentive city knew that at least insofar as
it concerned Conley's allegations of sexual misconduct and perversion,
Leo Frank's lawyers had thrown themselves upon the mercy of the court
(defense moves to strike most damaging testimony, screamed the
Journal's banner), the twelve men who would decide the case remained
unawares. Hence Luther Rosser pressed ahead at what the Georgian
termed "his hopeless task." The transportation of Mary Phagan's body to
the factory basement, the dispersal of her belongings in the trash, the return
trip to the superintendent's second-floor office, the surprise appearance of
Emma Clark and Corinthia Hall, the writing of the murder notes— Rosser
challenged Conley's testimony on all of these matters. And each time, the

254 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Negro withstood the onslaught, darting away here, delivering consistent
responses there.

Following so closely on the stumbles and rebuffs of the morning, this lat-
est series of failures proved almost more than Rosser could bear, and as the
afternoon wore on, he grew downright confrontational. Indeed, he often
seemed motivated less by a desire to elicit information helpful to Frank
than by a consuming need to unnerve Conley. During a sequence of ques-
tions regarding the Negro's assertion that in the course of his grisly labors,
he'd dropped little Mary's body on the metal room floor, Rosser cracked:
"You are twenty-seven years old. Do you mean to tell me you can't carry
1 10 pounds?" Returning to the subject of the cloth in which Conley claimed
to have wrapped the child's lifeless form, the lawyer, in an attempt to
pin down the sort of fabric from which it was made, snorted: "I suppose
you don't know whether cloth is woven or knitted or just grows." Then
there was the much commented upon topic of Jim's recently refurbished
wardrobe. Whatever others may have thought of the makeover, Rosser
viewed it as another indication of fraudulence, grumbling: "They put some
new clothes on you so the jury could see you like a dressed-up nigger." The
only thing the lawyer got out of Conley by way of these jibes was the admis-
sion that it was he who'd defecated at the base of the elevator on the day of
the murder. "As to how that dung came to be in the shaft," the negro
recalled, he had gone down the ladder at the suggestion of the previously
mentioned peg-legged drayman, stopping "right by the side of the elevator,
somewhere about the edge of it." Yet what, if anything, Frank's lead counsel
made of this intelligence is uncertain, for as with the earlier testimony con-
cerning the unsavory substance, he did not follow up.

Rosser concluded his work Tuesday by laying the groundwork for the
appearance of the defense's most anticipated witness— W. H. Mincey. Tak-
ing pains to get Conley on the record regarding the smallest details in the
insurance agent's much publicized affidavit alleging a suspicious April 26
run-in with the Negro, the lawyer inquired:

"Did you meet a man named Mincey [who] said you promised to take
some insurance with him?"

"No, sir."

"Didn't you tell him that you could not take any insurance— that you
were in trouble?"

"No, sir."

"Didn't you say that you had killed a girl and that you didn't want to kill
any more people?"

"No, sir."

PROSECUTION 255

"Didn't he say that one a day would be 365 a year?"
"No, sir."

For Rosser, Conley's denials— contradicting, as they did, the key points in
Mincey's story— provided reason for optimism. So, too, did the fact that
while making them, Jim evinced his first signs of anxiety. Reported the
Georgian: "He moved uneasily in his seat. He refused to meet the eyes of
his inquisitor. He fidgeted with his hands." Now more than ever, in short,
the defense was justified in believing that in the insurance agent, it had at its
disposal a powerful antidote to the state's Negro.

Tliesday ended, then, with a triumph for Rosser and Arnold, although
the day's earlier innings belonged decisively to Dorsey. There was, however,
no clear victor here, nor could there be until Judge Roan rendered his deci-
sion regarding the admissibility of the sexually charged portions of Con-
ley's testimony. Observed the Constitution:

Would Judge Roan rule for the state or the defense? This was the ques-
tion which was asked by everyone of his neighbor. Would the state be
allowed to still further press the advantage it had made, or would it have to
close deprived of this evidence? The air was full of doubt and uncertainty.

By nine Wednesday morning, a throng more than double the court-
room's capacity had congregated in front of the old city hall, filling the side-
walks and spilling into the streets. Once again, however, Atlanta would
have to wait. Shortly after gaveling the session to order, Judge Roan an-
nounced that he was still studying the defense motion, deferring his deci-
sion until following the noon recess.

Thus, during the next few hours, the trial would proceed in a climate of
unbearable anticipation, but proceed it did, for a key piece of business
remained unfinished.

By way of wrapping up his cross-exam of Jim Conley, Luther Rosser
devoted a substantial chunk of time simply to reading the Negro's affidavits
aloud, ending each installment with the question "This is what you swore,
isn't it, Jim?" Repeatedly, Conley would answer, "Yes, sir," whereupon the
lawyer would pause, allowing the jury to ponder the glaring discrepancies
among the various statements. Then, following a few inquiries into Jim's
behavior around the pencil factory in the days after Mary Phagan's murder,
inquiries plainly designed to set the stage for several more defense wit-
nesses, Rosser at last returned to his seat.

Not that Conley's interminable turn upon the stand was done. In fact, as
soon as his tormentor sat down, Hugh Dorsey was on his feet, initiating a

256 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

brief but critical redirect examination. Its purpose: to present a solution to
one of the case's most vexing mysteries, a puzzle that from the start had
stumped investigators and lawyers alike.

"Did you ever see Mary Phagan's pocketbook or mesh bag?" the solici-
tor began.

"Yes, it was on the desk in Mr. Frank's office when I went there to write
the notes."

"Describe it."

"It was a wire-ish looking pocketbook like the ladies carry, light-colored
and had little chains on it for the ladies to hold to."

"What did Frank do with it?"

"He put it in the safe."

Having thereby elicited testimony that if true not only further implicated
Frank in the murder but destroyed the defense's theory that Conley had
stolen the purse, Dorsey had gotten everything he had wanted from his
Negro and turned him back over to Rosser.

"Why didn't you tell all of this when you were telling the whole truth to
the detectives?" Frank's counsel demanded incredulously.

"I don't think they asked me."

"When did you first tell any detective about it?"

"I don't remember."

Upon hearing this exceedingly tired retort, Rosser's face darkened with
rage. But he said nothing, and following a couple of innocuous final queries,
the state's star witness was excused.

The time was 11:10, and all told, Conley had testified for more than 15
hours, over 13 of them under cross-examination. Still, his ordeal was not
done, for no sooner had he been escorted from the courtroom than he
found himself surrounded by reporters. "Jim," advised William Smith, who
by this point had reached his client's side, "don't you say a word to anybody,
do you hear?" The newspapermen, however, made such a noise that the
lawyer— on the condition that he got to do the questioning— relented.

"How did you like it, Jim?" Smith asked.

"I liked it fine."

"What do you think of Rosser?"

"He shore goes after you, don't he."

"What did you want most, Jim, while Rosser was grilling you?"

"Outside of wonderin' when he was goin' to quit," Conley replied with a
wide smile, "I guess I wanted to smoke most."

With that, Smith produced a cigarette, and Jim fired up, exhaling slowly.
Shortly thereafter, the lawyer, realizing that his client was exhausted, dis-
missed the press, leaving Conley alone with a stack of newspapers in which,
contrary to his countless assertions that he could not make sense of the

PROSECUTION 257

printed word, he quickly immersed himself. Meanwhile, several deacons
from the Reverend Henry Hugh Proctor's First Congregational Church—
which, as it had done with other poor black clients of Smith's, had agreed to
pay for representation for Conley— arrived on the scene and handed the
lawyer an envelope containing his fee in full— $40.

Court reconvened at two Wednesday afternoon outside the jury's presence.
Over lunch, Judge Roan had studied several conflicting legal precedents,
among them one provided by Hugh Dorsey in which a Georgia court had
overruled a defendant's belated objection to prejudicial testimony, allowing
it to stand. The magistrate in that action: Leonard Roan. Yet poorly as this
fact augured for Leo Frank, it was balanced by the report that entering into
his deliberations, the judge had confided that he considered the allegations
in question to be, at heart, immaterial.

Which was why, when Roan looked down from the bench and an-
nounced, "I have serious doubts as to the admissibility of this testimony as
an original proposition," the defense had good reason to believe the ruling
was favorable. But in his next breath, the judge dashed any such hopes. "I
am going to allow this testimony to remain," he declared. "It may be
extracted from the record, but it is an impossibility to withdraw it from the
jury's mind."

Before Roan could say another word, the packed courtroom exploded
in what one reporter described as "a riot of applause." Some spectators
hooted, others pounded their feet on the floor, still others shouted the news
out the windows. The demonstration was so spontaneous and intense that
the judge initially appeared too astonished to react. After a few seconds,
Reuben Arnold leaped from his seat, roaring, "I will ask for a mistrial if this
continues." But upon realizing that with the jury withdrawn, such a motion
was groundless, the lawyer amended his request, sputtering, "I shall ask that
the court be cleared." Soon enough, however, Roan recovered his wits, and
by sternly admonishing the gallery while directing deputies to remove the
most vociferous offenders, he restored order. Yet there could be no mistak-
ing the significance of what had transpired. Not only had the decision done
severe damage to the defense (roan's ruling heavy blow, boomed the
Georgian), but the throng's boisterous response indicated that Atlanta's
sympathies had turned overwhelmingly against Leo Frank.

With Jim Conley's testimony fully on the record, Hugh Dorsey, intent upon
completing a crucial examination that had been cut short the previous week,
resummoned Dr. Henry F Harris, and for the remainder of the afternoon,

258 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

the still-ailing physician, ensconced in an upholstered armchair brought in
for his comfort, further detailed the microscopic observations he'd made
during Mary Phagan's autopsy. Considering the pulse-quickening quality of
Conley's turn upon the stand, Harris's cool assertions regarding the time of
the child's murder (a lack of hydrochloric acid in the stomach offered added
proof that death had occurred within 45 minutes of eating) came across as a
touch academic. Yet in a sense, this was just the note the state wanted to
strike. The Georgian's Fuzzy Woodruff observed that Jim Conley's story was
"a ragtime composition, with the weirdest syncopations, and then came Dr.
Harris right on his heels and gave evidence full of soundness and learned-
ness.To the spectators, it seemed that they had just heard 'Alexander's Rag-
time Band' played and then a Bach fugue for an encore."

And what made the move all the more effective was the fact that during
his cross-examination of Harris, Reuben Arnold struggled. Yes, the physi-
cian admitted, "the science of digestion is rather a modern thing." And true,
he added, "every individual is almost a law unto himself." But save for these
broad concessions, Harris stuck to his position. Noted the Constitution:
"Arnold failed to develop anything of material benefit to the defense."

Thursday morning, Hugh Dorsey produced the white witness whose job it
was to verify Jim Conley's assertion that Leo Frank regularly entertained
prostitutes in his pencil factory offices.

About 35 years old, brown-haired, with heavy eyebrows, a thin mous-
tache and tightly compressed lips, C. Brutus Dalton, a carpenter for the
Western and Atlantic Railroad, gave every appearance of being a hard
case— considering the purpose of his testimony, just what the solicitor
wanted.

"Do you know Leo M. Frank?" Dorsey began.

"Yes."

"Do you know Daisy Hopkins?"

"Yes."

"Do you know Jim Conley?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever go to Frank's office with Miss Daisy Hopkins?"

"Yes."

"Was Frank there?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever go down in the basement?"

"Yes."

"Where in the basement?"

PROSECUTION 259

To this, Dalton took a pointer and turning to Bert Green's diagram indi-
cated the plywood enclosure where following Mary Phagan's murder the
police had discovered a cot and numerous female footprints.

"Did you ever see Conley on those visits?"

"Yes."

"Who was with Frank?"

"Why, sometimes two and sometimes one young woman."

With that, Dorsey turned the witness over to the defense.

From Luther Rosser's perspective, Dalton presented a now familiar
problem— a vague and disreputable witness whose very vagueness and dis-
reputability ended up validating his allegations. Nonetheless, the lawyer did
what he could with him, rapidly ascertaining that not only was he unsure of
the dates he'd visited Frank's office but that he could not say with certainty
whether the women he'd seen there— far from being fallen creatures— were
not such employees as the plant stenographer. A couple of aspects of Dal-
ton's story thus blunted, Rosser turned his attention to a topic that Dorsey
had purposely ignored. To call the witness a career criminal would have
been harsh but not overly so. As he now admitted, he had been arrested
numerous times for offenses ranging from stealing corn and cotton from
farmers to burglarizing a machine shop, along the way serving a sentence on
the chain gang. Rosser's point: Dalton wasn't the type with whom Frank
ordinarily consorted.

The last word, however, belonged to Dorsey, who during his redirect
examination obtained several damning particulars. For one, Dalton backed
up Conley's account of how the office trysts worked, asserting that the
Negro had stood guard in the lobby and generally received a quarter tip for
his services. For another, he revealed that Frank kept "Coca-Cola, lemon
and lime and beer" on the premises. Finally, as to the possibility that the
women present on the Saturdays in question might have been there in an
official capacity, he simply stated: "I never saw the ladies in his office doing
any writing."

Once Dalton left the stand, Dorsey, indicating that his work was almost
done, undertook the task of placing various exhibits— among them the bot-
tles containing cabbage extracted from Mary Phagan's stomach— in evi-
dence. Then he asked Rosser and Arnold to produce the National Pencil
Company's financial records, including the factory cash and bank books.
Upon receiving the lawyers' assent, the state rested, leaving the defense in
an awful spot. Reported the Georgian:

Every single thing that Solicitor General Hugh Dorsey declared in
advance that he would get before the jury is there now.

260 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

One by one the prosecutor has forged the links in the chain that he
maintains fixes the guilt of the Phagan murder on Leo Frank and Leo
Frank alone.

And the strongest of these links was, of course, Jim Conley's testimony,
which in the end dazzled even the Georgian's James B. Nevin, who con-
ceded that its many minor mendacities aside, the Negro's account could in
the main be true, concluding:

If the story Conley tells IS a lie, then it is the most inhumanly devilish,
the most cunningly clever, and the most amazingly sustained lie ever told
in Georgia!

ELEVEN

Leo Frank's lawyers, declared the Georgian, now faced a single task:
"the undoing of conley. Without Conley, the State is rendered
helpless." In the same breath, however, the same paper argued that
"the biggest element in the case is the time element," asserting that if the
defense could establish that Mary Phagan met her death at some point later
than 12:05 on April 26, the narrative Hugh Dorsey had so seamlessly woven
would unravel. Others, though, believed that the damage inflicted by
the prosecution was such that Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold had no
choice but to pursue a more dangerous tack. "Not one in a hundred defen-
dants place their character in issue when on trial for murder," noted the
Constitution, "but a condition has arisen in the Frank case which may cause
his attorneys to think it wise to take this step. It came when James Conley
testified to misconduct on the part of the defendant which would brand him
as an outcast among men." The alternatives were various and risky. All
of which may explain why when Dr. Leroy Childs, the first man up for
Frank, walked into the courtroom just before noon on Thursday, Arnold
told reporters: "Further than this witness, I do not know what line we will
pursue at the present."

A 1906 graduate of the University of Michigan medical school, Childs
had been in surgical practice in Atlanta for five years. His appearance on the
stand indicated that the defense would initially attack the state's time line.
Hoping that the young surgeon could counter Dr. Henry F Harris's critical
findings regarding the hour of Mary Phagan's demise, Arnold directed his
attention to the foodstuff upon which the calculations were based, inquir-
ing: "Is cabbage considered a hard food to digest?"

"It is generally considered the hardest," replied Childs, citing the veg-
etable's high cellulose content.

Whereupon Arnold produced the vial containing the cabbage removed
from little Mary's stomach, which Harris maintained had been ingested no
more than 45 minutes before the girl died. "Look at this cabbage," the
lawyer instructed. "Was it well masticated?"

"Not very well."

"Where does cabbage begin to be digested?"

262 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"In the mouth, when ptyalin in the saliva acts on it."

"Does it keep up in the stomach?"

"No, the acids of the stomach neutralize the ptyalin."

"Then where is cabbage really digested?"

"In the small intestines."

"When it goes out of the stomach, it is really undigested, is it not?"

"Yes. It may pass out of the body entirely in the undigested form."

"Are there a great many things that retard digestion?"

"Yes, the psychic causes— fright, anger and sudden mental excitement."

Here, Arnold once again held up the vial containing the cabbage in ques-
tion. Then, in a query constructed so as to remind the jury of the lengthy
period that had elapsed between the date of Mary Phagan's murder and the
date her remains were autopsied, he demanded: "Take a human body that
has been interred nine days. Take out the stomach and in the contents find
cabbage and certain remnants of wheat bread. Could you hazard an opin-
ion or guess that the person had taken it into his stomach one-half or three-
quarters of an hour before death?"

"I certainly could not," answered Childs.

"How long would you say it was possible for cabbage like this to stay in
the stomach?"

"I have seen cabbage less digested than that which had been in the stom-
ach for twelve hours."

From the defense's perspective, Childs's observations could not have
been more helpful, and after eliciting a couple of other tidbits (among them
that the bruise to little Mary's eye could have been caused by a lick to the
back of her head and that the inflammation in her vagina could have been
produced by a digital examination made by Dr. J. W. Hurt during his pre-
liminary postmortem), Arnold turned the surgeon over to Dorsey for what
proved to be an ineffectual cross-examination. Childs held to his position
that the time of Mary Phagan's death could not be pinpointed with any-
where near the precision claimed by the state. Reported the Georgian:
"Childs's testimony if believed by the jury served utterly to demolish the
most sensational declaration by Dr. Harris."

Having delivered a strong first blow to the prosecution's murder-day
chronology, Frank's lawyers called a familiar and problematic figure. Dur-
ing his initial turn upon the stand, Harry Scott had given the defense fits, but
it would now use him to launch its assault on Jim Conley. After establishing
that the Pinkerton agent had been at headquarters in mid-May when Mrs.
Arthur White tentatively picked Conley out of a lineup as the Negro she'd
seen lurking in the pencil factory lobby on April 26, Luther Rosser in-
quired: "Was there any effort on Jim's part to change his features as if he
desired to escape identification?" Though Dorsey successfully objected to

DEFENSE 263

the wording of this question, once Frank's counsel rephrased it, Scott
replied: "He was chewing his lips and twirling a cigarette in his fingers. He
didn't seem to know how to hold on to it. He could not keep his feet still."
The implications could not have been clearer. Conley had been more nerv-
ous at the prospect of being placed at the scene of the crime than had been
previously made known.

Rosser's primary interest, however, was in four subsequent headquarters
gatherings in which Scott had played a role. These, of course, were the ses-
sions that produced Conley 's conflicting affidavits. The lawyer's hope was to
cast doubt on the entire process, accomplishing what he had so plainly
failed to achieve during his cross-examination of the Negro.

"Didn't Conley verbally deny to you on May 18 that he had any con-
nection with the murder?" Rosser began after glancing at Jim's statement
of the same date.

"Yes."

"Give us a picture of what you and [John] Black did to him."

"We talked pretty rough to him."

"You gave him the third degree, didn't you?"

"I wouldn't say that we use the third degree."

"Didn't one of you wheedle him and the other sympathize with him?"

"I'll admit that we used a bit of profanity."

"How long was the grilling you gave him that Sunday?"

"Two hours."

A sense of the detectives' techniques thereby conveyed, Rosser began to
question Scott on the topic of how Conley's narrative had evolved. After
reaffirming that in his affidavit of May 24, Jim, while confessing to a part in
the affair, had asserted that Frank dictated the murder notes the Friday
before the crime, the lawyer asked: "On May 27, how long did you sit with
him?"

"Five or six hours."

"You impressed upon him the fact that his May 24 statement was not
plausible and that his story of writing the notes on Friday would show pre-
meditation, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"You saw him again on May 28?"

"Yes."

"You stayed with him all day that time, explaining that his statement
was absolutely unbelievable?"

"Yes."

264 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"On this day, he made another statement?"
"Yes."

"This time, he changed his dates from Friday to Saturday?"
"Yes."

"He said it was his last statement, didn't he, and that he had made up his
mind to tell the truth?"
"Yes."

Scott was not relating much that was new here, but Rosser was bringing
attention to the investigators' participation in the shaping of Conley's story.
For the first time, the jury was hearing a straight version of how it had all
worked, one unencumbered by the evasions and memory lapses that had
marked the Negro's telling of the tale. Accordingly, Rosser steered the
Pinkerton agent to the subject of the May 29 affidavit, the one that Jim had
sworn was the affidavit to end all affidavits.

"In that statement, he said nothing about watching for Frank, did he?"
"No."

"Did you try to get him to tell about the mesh bag of Mary Phagan?"
"Yes. He denied having seen it."

"Did he tell you anything about Frank putting it in his safe?"
"He told me nothing about it."
"Did he tell you he'd seen Mary Phagan that day?"
"No."

"Did he tell you he heard someone tiptoe to Frank's office?"
"No."

"Did he tell you he heard somebody stamp, and that then he went to
sleep and the next thing he heard was the whistling?"
"No, sir."

"Did he tell you about Frank showing him how to lock the door?"
"No, sir."

Each of these responses ran counter to an allegation Conley had ulti-
mately leveled from the stand. After touching on several other instances in
which the Negro had evidently held back on the detectives, Rosser returned
to his seat, and Dorsey initiated what proved to be another unavailing
cross-examination. True, the solicitor secured Scott's endorsement of Con-
ley's final version of what had transpired on April 26. But he could not
reverse the overall impression, meaning that when the Pinkerton agent
stepped down and court recessed for the day, the defense had succeeded in
introducing a note of skepticism regarding the manner in which the all-
important affidavits had been obtained. Observed the Constitution: "Scott's

DEFENSE 265

statement created a telling effect, and it is said to have caused the wavering
of opinion [concerning] the negro's story."

On Friday, Frank's lawyers brought to the stand the woman whom Conley
claimed had been one of the superintendent's paramours. Daisy Hopkins
was an angular country gal clad in a yellow straw hat and a striped cotton
dress that, according to the Georgian, "looked a bit too short." While taking
the oath, she initially raised her left hand, and throughout her testimony, she
chewed gum. But lack of refinement notwithstanding, this rag and bone and
hank of hair was, as Reuben Arnold quickly established, married. More-
over, from October 191 1 through June 191 2, she had worked in the second-
floor packing room of the National Pencil Factory, and during that time, she
told the lawyer, Frank never spoke to her and she "never did speak to him."
That said, Arnold asked: "Did you ever go into Frank's office and drink beer
and cold drinks with other women?"

"No. I never went into his office, and I don't drink."

"Do you know C. B. Dalton?"

"I know him when I see him."

"Did you ever go to the pencil factory with Dalton?"

"No. I never did."

"Did you introduce him to Mr. Frank?"

"No, I did not."

"Did you ever go into the factory basement with Dalton?"

"No. I don't even know where the basement is. I never have been in it."

Considering the havoc Conley's assertions regarding Daisy and Frank
had wrought, her blanket denial of any untoward involvement with either
the superintendent or Dalton gave every promise of constituting a sig-
nal victory for the defense. Yet no sooner had Dorsey started his cross-
examination than this victory was all but snatched away. Right off the bat,
the solicitor, by inquiring into whether the woman recalled the place where
she had exchanged vows or even knew her husband's initials, insinuated
that she may have been wed in name only. Then the solicitor expressed
interest in a certain medical condition for which "Miss Hopkins"— as he
insisted upon calling her— had been seeking treatment. Dorsey was imply-
ing that Daisy suffered from venereal disease, an implication her hesitant
and vague reply of "stomach trouble" merely reinforced. Finally, the solici-
tor asked point-blank: "Have you ever been in jail, Miss Hopkins?"

"No, sir," she answered after a long pause.

"Why, Miss Hopkins, didn't this man get you out of jail?" Dorsey
rejoined, indicating his assistant, Newt Garner.

266 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"No, sir, but he was along."

"Well, you were in jail now. And who got you out?"
Here, Daisy pointed to William Smith, who, as it happened, had repre-
sented her.

"What were you in jail for, Miss Hopkins?"

"Somebody told a tale on me," Daisy responded.

"Weren't you there for reasons of immorality?"

"They accused me," the woman at last admitted, "of fornication."

Though Arnold succeeded in subsequently establishing that Daisy had
never been convicted and was released after paying a fine, the fact that her
trustworthiness and character were so plainly questionable rendered her, in
the end, of dubious value, and she stepped down having, in all likelihood,
marginally reinforced Conley's story.

In the wake of Daisy Hopkins's disappointing turn upon the stand, the
defense called W. M. Matthews, the motorman on the English Avenue trol-
ley that brought Mary Phagan to town on April 26, and Arnold again set
about attacking the state's time line, eliciting the potentially pivotal asser-
tion that little Mary did not get off the car until 12:10— a full five minutes
after the prosecution contended that she was dead. Frank's lawyer then
directed Matthews to a topic of nearly equal import, obtaining his assur-
ance that the girl's self-professed beau George Epps, far from sitting beside
her on the ride, wasn't on board. With that, Arnold turned the motorman
over to his counterpart.

Dorsey took issue with just about everything Matthews had said, scoffing
at his ability to remember four months after the fact the precise hour Mary
Phagan had exited the trolley and forcing him to concede that if asked to
describe Epps, he would be hard-pressed to provide any distinguishing
characteristics. Yet these triumphs notwithstanding, the solicitor's efforts to
undermine the motorman's testimony ultimately failed. For one thing,
Matthews evinced no doubts regarding the details of his April 26 run, even
recollecting a conversation he'd had with little Mary. For another, once
the motorman stepped down, Arnold summoned W. T. Hollis— on the day
of the murder, the conductor on the English Avenue car— who corrobo-
rated his coworker on every significant point, including the one about the
Epps boy not being on the trip. All of which, of course, augured well for
the defense, not only raising the hoped-for doubts regarding the state's
chronology but shining a harsh light on the claims of two of its most impor-
tant witnesses. Reported the Georgian:

If the testimony of the street car employees is accurate, it completely
upsets Jim Conley's story that he saw Mary Phagan enter the factory

DEFENSE 267

before Monteen Stover came in. By the Stover girl's own testimony she
entered the factory at 12:05 o'clock and left at 12:10 o'clock. Thus, she had
gone by the time the Phagan girl arrived.

It also serves to destroy the significance of the Stover girl's testimony
that Frank was absent from his office when she arrived there. As Mary
Phagan had not yet arrived, according to the testimony of the street car
men, it could hardly be regarded as a suspicious circumstance that Frank
was not in his office, if it develops that he really was not.

Heretofore, through a myriad of witnesses but primarily through the fac-
tory diagram produced by the Georgian's Bert Green, Hugh Dorsey had
determined what the jury knew about the layout of the crime scene. The
plant basement, metal department and office— in the eyes of the twelve
men who would determine Frank's fate, these spaces existed only as the
solicitor had pictured them. Now, however, the defense would challenge
the prosecution's portrait. It started by calling a practitioner of that most
exacting profession, civil engineering.

Within minutes of taking the stand, Albert Kauffman was unscrolling
blueprints of the National Pencil Factory on the jury-box rail and, at Reuben
Arnold's direction, pointing out potentially significant elements of the
plant's design that the state had failed to mention. To begin with, at the rear
of a long hallway leading back from the first-floor elevator lobby, a previ-
ously unremarked-upon five-foot-wide chute opened into the basement
only a few yards from where Mary Phagan's remains were found. Chiefly
used for sliding heavy boxes to the lower level, this chute, declared the engi-
neer in a phrase that made the implications obvious, "was big enough for
one or two human bodies or even a pony." Then there were the swinging
doors through which employees entered and exited the metal department.
As Kauffman's schematics plainly revealed, the doors were glassed in at the
tops— yet another impediment to the room's utility as a trysting place. Simi-
larly, the plans showed that Frank's office was hardly the spot for afternoon
beer parties with women of ill repute— the windows lacked curtains or
shades. Last but not least, there was the matter of the office safe. "The safe is
four and one-half feet high," the engineer asserted, adding that "a person
five feet and two inches tall could not see over [it]." Simply put, even if the
superintendent was seated at his desk on April 26, Monteen Stover could
well have missed him if the safe's door was open.

In his examination of his next witness, a photographer named John
Quincy Adams, Arnold again treated the jury to a visual display, this time in
the form of eight-by-ten glossies of the factory. First came a shot of Frank's
inner office, the view of the desk blocked by the open safe door. Then one of
the metal-department floor that brought home the close proximity of the

268 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

women's restroom to the spot where bloodstains were discovered. Finally,
an image of the gears and pulleys at the top of the elevator shaft, stilled
here but in the jurors' minds, or so the defense hoped, a clangorous rebuke
to Jim Conley's claim that he and Frank had managed to transport little
Mary's body in the lift without anyone having heard.

Though the state did not concede the testimony of Kauffman or Adams,
Frank Hooper— who henceforth would alternate with Dorsey in the con-
ducting of cross-examinations— was able to do little with either witness.
True, he got Kauffman to admit that the famous factory scuttle hole was, at
two feet by two feet three inches, too small for someone to have carried
Mary Phagan's body through. And yes, he induced Adams to allow that dur-
ing the several months that elapsed between April 26 and the day he took
his photographs of the plant, someone could have rearranged the office fur-
niture so that the open safe door obscured Frank's desk. But as court
recessed for lunch, the consensus was that at the least, Arnold had suc-
ceeded in challenging the prosecution's depiction of the crime scene, and at
the most, had laid the groundwork for a new theory of what had transpired.
Proclaimed the Constitution's page-one headline:

Defense Will Seek to Show That Mary Phagan's Body Was Tossed Down a
Chute in Rear of Pencil Factory And Not Taken Down by Elevator as the
State Insists.

Shortly after the proceedings reconvened Friday afternoon, Frank's
lawyers unveiled the exhibit that they believed would settle the matter
of the crime scene's appearance and configuration for all time— a six-
and-one-quarter-foot-long scale model of the National Pencil Factory con-
structed out of pasteboard by an expert pattern maker. Like Bert Green's
diagram, the model provided an exposed view of the plant's inner workings.
Also, it was intricately detailed, featuring everything from dollhouse-sized
furniture in the superintendent's office to a miniature boiler and trash pile
in the basement. Yet unlike Green's diagram, the model was free from such
editorial embellishments as Maltese crosses, dotted lines and written keys.
From the defense's vantage, here was a three-dimensional representation
based solely on the facts, and once it was situated on the courtroom floor in
front of the jury box, Reuben Arnold summoned assistant plant superin-
tendent N. V. Darley to elucidate the ways in which those facts undermined
the prosecution's theories.

Darley had done Leo Frank a world of good when testifying for the state,
and he came through for his boss once again. Arnold began by directing his
attention to a previously undiscussed section of the factory building— a
self-contained first-floor enclosure running from the rear of the elevator

DEFENSE 269

shaft to the back wall. For several years, this space had comprised the work-
room of the Clark Woodenware Company, a manufacturer of cartons
and boxes, but since January, when the concern moved to quarters across
town, it had been vacant. Though the empty chamber's connection to the
Phagan murder initially seemed obscure, Mister Rube immediately zeroed
in on the relevant detail— a presumably sealed entrance just behind the
spot where Jim Conley claimed to have been sitting on the morning of
April 26.

"Has this door been kept locked, Mr. Darley?"

"We kept it locked after the Clark Woodenware Company moved out,
[but] two or three days after the murder we found it broken open."

Arnold then asked whether the former Clark Woodenware location pro-
vided any access to the basement. Yes, it did, responded Darley, indicating
an opening that represented a never before mentioned second scuttle hole.
Here was yet another conduit through which little Mary's body could have
been dropped into the cellar. When several of the jurors stood to get a bet-
ter look, it became plain they were at least contemplating the possibility
that one of the prosecution's central hypotheses might be in error.

During his cross-examination of Darley, Hugh Dorsey labored to quell
such doubts. But despite his eliciting the admission that for all the assistant
superintendent knew, it could have been the investigating officers who
broke into the long-shuttered Clark Woodenware space, the main point
remained unchallenged. For now, at least, the defense's version of reality
was ascendant, and though more remained to be said on the topic, once
Darley stepped down, the factory model was removed from the courtroom.

Arnold used Friday's concluding witness, the National Pencil Company
day watchman E. F. Holloway, to resume the assault upon Jim Conley,
obtaining in rapid succession statements that undercut a number of the
Negro's most deleterious charges. After asserting that he had not missed
work since June 191 2, Holloway declared that he had never seen the fac-
tory's front door locked on a Saturday. "I always kept the door," he said. "I
never turned it over to Conley or anyone else." Holloway also scoffed at the
Negro's claim that Daisy Hopkins visited the plant on weekends. "I have
never known Mr. Frank to have any woman on Saturday excepting his
wife," he testified. "She came there on Saturdays and went home with him
about once a month." And besides, he added in response to a related ques-
tion, so many factory employees— among them salesmen bringing in orders
and laborers servicing machinery— dropped by unannounced on weekends
that even had Frank been thus inclined, the office would have been the last
place to indulge in "immoralities." Then there was Conley's story alleging
wild goings-on in the plant on Thanksgiving Day 1912. Holloway utterly
dismissed this tale. Not only had he been there until noon on the holiday,

270 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

and not only had he not seen the white-shoed, white-stockinged creature
the Negro had sworn was the guest of honor, but the likelihood that a
female would have been out in such a summery getup was slight— Atlanta
had been hit by a snowstorm that afternoon. Finally, Arnold asked Hol-
loway if he'd ever witnessed any of the horseplay between Frank and Con-
ley to which the Negro had attested. Replied the day watchman: "I never
saw Mr. Frank goose, pinch or joke with Conley."

Holloway's testimony constituted the most potent attack yet on the
state's Negro, but by the time Dorsey finished with him, his motives— if not
his veracity— would be in serious dispute. Though Holloway's pro-Frank
sympathies had been apparent since late May when, along with several
other pencil company employees, he'd proclaimed his belief in Jim Conley's
guilt, the solicitor suspected that the day watchman, far from simply taking
sides, had tried to tamper with the prosecution's case. Specifically, he
believed that Holloway had attempted to persuade Newt Lee's predecessor
as night watchman to announce that the superintendent had been in the
habit of telephoning him at work after hours, a declaration that would, of
course, have made the much discussed call to the factory the evening of
Mary Phagan's murder seem less sinister. Hence the solicitor began by
grilling Holloway as to this point, and while the day watchman denied any
impropriety, he was, according to every account, badly rattled. This, how-
ever, was just the prelude. Dorsey followed up by accusing Holloway —who
had, after all, spotted Conley washing the infamous red stains from his
shirt— of being actuated by nothing more than a desire for the reward
money. Here again, the day watchman repudiated the charge, but when the
solicitor asked him whether he'd told the police that Jim was "his nigger,"
thereby implying that if Conley was convicted he should be the financial
beneficiary, he conceded that he'd made such a statement. Bluntly put, Hol-
loway was anything but a disinterested party, and regardless of the good
he'd done the cause at the outset, he departed the stand, in the Georgian's
estimation, having "partly spoiled" what was otherwise a "very favorable
day for the defense."

Saturday's half-session opened with the return of the barefooted newsboy,
George Epps. Initially, the subject of Reuben Arnold's examination— an
interview George and his sister Vera had given to the Georgian's John
Minar on the Sunday little Mary's body was discovered— appeared not to
promise much. But after establishing that the boy recalled meeting with the
reporter, the lawyer promptly led him onto thin ice, demanding: "Did he
ask you and your sister when was the last time you saw Mary Phagan, and
did your sister say Thursday?"

DEFENSE 27I

Confronted by this direct challenge to his story of having seen the victim
on Saturday, April 26, Epps hastily replied, "I wasn't there then," adding
that just before Minar initiated the exchange at issue, he'd momentarily
ducked out.

"Weren't you there when he asked that question?" Arnold pressed.

"No. I was not."

While Frank's counsel believed he had caught George in a crucial lie, he
would leave it to his next witness to bring the point home.

Like most of the Georgian's journalistic mercenaries, John Minar was a
veteran of numerous Hearst newspaper battles, and Arnold used him to
maximum effect by posing essentially the same question he'd posed to
Epps. The reporter's response was that George had very definitely been
with his sister as he'd asked them when they last saw little Mary. Vera, he
confirmed, had answered Thursday.

"When did George Epps say he saw her?"

"The boy said he saw her occasionally going to work in the mornings."

"Did he claim or breathe a thing about seeing her after Thursday?"

"He did not."

During his cross-examination of Minar, Frank Hooper endeavored to
cast aspersions on the reporter's reliability by emphasizing the Georgian's
pro-defense editorial stance, at one point inquiring: "Haven't you had direc-
tions to get everything possible that is favorable to the defendant?" Yet this
line of attack accomplished little, for as Minar coolly reminded Dorsey's
assistant, at the time of the Epps interview, Newt Lee was the primary sus-
pect. Whereupon Hooper returned to his seat, having done nothing to blunt
the burgeoning impression that young George's account of riding into town
with Mary Phagan on the day of the murder was a fabrication.

Not only was Herbert Schiff, the National Pencil Company's other as-
sistant superintendent and Saturday's final witness, well versed in details
relevant to factory operations, he possessed a winning and convincing
personality. Arnold hoped to accomplish a great deal with him. After estab-
lishing that Schiff had missed just two Saturdays at the office since June 1,
191 2, and that he generally worked alongside his superior, the lawyer
asked: "Did you ever see Jim Conley on Saturday afternoons?"

"No."

"Did you and Frank ever have women up there?"

"No."

"Did Mrs. Frank ever come to the factory on Saturday afternoons?"

"Quite often."

"Did you know this man Dalton?"

"Never saw him."

"Do you know Daisy Hopkins?"

272 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"Yes."

"Did you ever see her come back on Saturday afternoon alone or with
anybody else?"

"I did not."

Nearly a year of Saturdays thus innocently accounted for, Arnold
directed Schiff s attention to the holiday on which Conley maintained Frank
had indulged in his most outrageous debauch. After obtaining confirmation
of E. F. Holloway's assertion that Thanksgiving 191 2 had indeed been "cold
and snowing," Arnold startled the courtroom by eliciting the fact that Jim
actually had been in the building that day. "I ordered Conley to come back
to clean up the box room," Schiff recalled. Far from hurting Frank, however,
this news ultimately helped him, for as the assistant superintendent added,
the Negro had finished his labors at 10:30 and left before noon— before, in
short, the elegant, white-shoed woman purportedly arrived.

"When did Frank leave?" the lawyer followed up.

"About twelve. We left together. I saw Frank to his car for home."

By Schiff s account, then, neither Conley nor Frank was at the plant at
the time of the alleged frolics. But lest there be suspicion that the superin-
tendent might have returned later, Arnold inquired: "Do you remember
anything Frank had to do that day?"

"Yes," Schiff replied. "He went to a B'Nai Brith affair."

Coming so quickly on the heels of his refutation of Conley's charges
regarding Frank's Saturday activities, Schiff s debunking of his account of
the Thanksgiving romp suggested an inevitable line of inquiry.

"Do you know Jim Conley's general character for truth and veracity?"
Arnold demanded.

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"Bad."

"Would you, knowing his character, believe him on oath?"

"I would not."

With that, Arnold was momentarily finished with the subject of Conley
and pointed Schiff to his other principal area of interest— the amount and
kind of office work Leo Frank had completed on the Saturday of Mary Pha-
gan's death. Though the defense had, of course, touched on this topic during
the trial's opening week, no one save the accused himself could speak more
authoritatively than Schiff to the computations the factory's weekly finan-
cial sheet entailed. Which was exactly what the lawyer asked him to do.
After glancing over the April 26 sheet, Schiff began a painstaking account:

Under the heading "Material Costs," the first figure 2719 and l A represents
the number of gross that we manufactured for that week. To get that figure

DEFENSE 273

Mr. Frank had to enter all his packing reports for Thursday containing two
or three pages, each of them containing 12 to 15 or 18 items. He had to cal-
culate and have a separate report as to each kind of pencil and then add
them up. We manufacture over a hundred kinds of pencils. That week we
dealt with about 35 different kinds. To do this you have to add, multiply,
classify and separate each pencil into a different class.

And these equations, Schiff added, covered only finished pencils. The dif-
ferent raw materials— slats, rubber, lead— had to be similarly broken down.
Same with packing supplies— boxes, wrappers and the like. Initially, the
assistant superintendent's atomization of all this may have struck the jurors
as overly detailed, but as he proceeded, speaking of deliveries processed
and orders fulfilled, a potentially exonerating vision of Frank's activities on
the day of the crime came to life. In it, the factory boss, far from resembling
the sexual deviant depicted by the state, emerged as a paragon of modern
management, a dispassionate, attentive executive busily balancing columns
of numbers and presiding over engines of production. After carefully citing
a few last figures, Schiff, confirming an earlier witness, proclaimed: "I think
it would take about three hours to go through the calculations and com-
plete the sheet." At which point Arnold produced a bundle of previous
reports written by Frank. After the assistant superintendent pronounced
the one compiled the afternoon of little Mary's demise to be identical to the
others in all relevant aspects, the sheets were placed in evidence: proof, or
so the defense hoped, that the Saturday of the killing had been no different
for Frank than scores of Saturdays before.

Arnold concluded by eliciting several pieces of information that while
not earthshaking in and of themselves added up to a forceful volley. First,
Schiff testified that it was he— not Frank— who'd manned the payroll win-
dow the Friday prior to the murder, which cast terrific doubt on Helen Fer-
guson's claim that Frank had rebuffed her request for Mary Phagan's pay
that evening. Schiff also confirmed that just as his superior had told Black
and Starnes the morning little Mary's body was found, the pencil com-
pany's insurance agent had ordered that the factory's electrical switch box
be kept unlocked. Moreover, he suggested yet another way in which the
girl's remains could have been transported to the basement, telling the
lawyer that the elevator's metal doors could be pried open by hand, mean-
ing that someone could be pushed through the opening without activitating
the motor. Finally, Schiff declared that when he came to work the Monday
following the crime, the office safe was open, and there was no mesh purse
inside. On that note, Arnold sat down.

Hugh Dorsey began his cross-examination not by attacking the sub-
stance of Schiff s testimony but by trying to paint him as a shameless pro-

274 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Frank loyalist. The solicitor sought to convey this impression through a
series of questions designed to suggest that in the days immediately follow-
ing Mary Phagan's murder, the assistant superintendent had maligned the
dead girl's character by telling various officials she was pregnant and about
to lose her job. Reuben Arnold, however, would not countenance such a
line of inquiry and neither, it turned out, would Judge Roan, who sustained
each of the defense's many objections. Dorsey then changed tacks, honing
in on the amount of time Schiff contended was necessary to complete the
factory's financial sheet. Here again the solicitor came up short. Yes, he got
the assistant superintendent to concede that he'd never actually clocked
Frank doing the job. But that was it. In fact, when Dorsey presented the
April 26 report to Schiff and asked how he could be certain Frank had not
prepared it in advance, he was informed that as of quitting time the previ-
ous evening, work on the sheet had not started. Of course, Dorsey wasn't
about to let such a rebuff stop him, but with the lunch hour now at hand, he
did not protest Roan's decision to adjourn for the week. As the newspapers
agreed, the prosecution was spinning its wheels. Reported the Constitution:
"Saturday was by far the best day the defense in the Frank trial has had."
And most observers expected better days ahead. Noted the Georgian in its
Sunday editions:

As all interest centered in the dramatic story of Jim Conley while the
case of the prosecution in the Frank trial was being presented, so the pub-
lic now is awaiting with the keenest expectancy the tale that W. H. Mincey,
pedagogue and insurance solicitor, will relate when he is called this week
by the attorneys for Leo M. Frank.

Conley swore as glibly as though he were telling of an inconsequential
incident in one of his crap games that Frank had confessed to him the
killing of Mary Phagan.

Mincey will tell a similar story, except that Conley will be named as the
man confessing the crime.

The trial's third week started exactly as its second had ended— with
Hugh Dorsey trying to break down Herbert Schiff. During the course of
Monday's first two hours, the solicitor thoroughly sifted the assistant super-
intendent, eventually obtaining several seemingly significant admissions. To
begin with, Schiff acknowledged that Leo Frank could have finished the fac-
tory's financial sheet the Saturday morning of the murder. Then, in response
to a question implying that Jim Conley received special treatment at the
plant, he conceded that the Negro's untrustworthy reputation notwith-
standing, his superiors never considered firing him. Finally, he allowed that
had Mary Phagan's body been dropped into the basement through the

DEFENSE 275

Clark Woodenware space's scuttle hole, it would have landed in a location
where Newt Lee would have spotted it far earlier than he did.

By the time Reuben Arnold completed his redirect examination, how-
ever, most of the damage had been repaired. Regarding the financial sheet's
preparation, Schiff declared that during the five years he'd worked at the
National Pencil Company, Frank had without exception written up the doc-
ument on Saturday afternoons. As for not dismissing Conley, Schiff offered
a rationale that few who heard it would have rejected, asserting that trust-
worthy Negroes were simply hard to find. Considering that Dorsey had
made a concerted effort to discredit Schiff, the survival of his testimony's
main points represented a great triumph for the defense. But it would not
be without a cost, for from this moment forth, the solicitor would conduct
himself far more fiercely.

No sooner had Arnold finished examining his next witness— Dr. George
Bachman, a French-born physiology professor at the Atlanta College of
Physicians and Surgeons who continued the assault on Dr. Harris's autopsy
findings— than Dorsey gave an initial indication of just how rough he now
intended to play.

"Are you an expert chemist?" the solicitor began.

"I am so far as the body is concerned."

"What is amidulin?"

"I never heard of the word."

"Well, if you have never heard of amidulin, did you ever hear of ery-
throdextrin?"

"Write it out."

And on it went, with Dorsey firing fifty other medical tongue twisters at
Bachman, only a few of which the professor could decipher and several of
which occasioned outbursts of laughter from a gallery that delighted in
watching an erudite furriner be made to appear ignorant. Though some of
the terms had to do with digestion and were therefore relevant to the issue
at hand, the solicitor's goal was to divert attention from the substance of the
professor's testimony.

Whatever pause Hugh Dorsey's treatment of Bachman may have given
Frank's lawyers, they began Monday's afternoon session by calling yet
another physician, Dr. Thomas Hancock, chief of medicine for the Georgia
Railway and Power Company. A graduate of Columbia University who had
been in practice for 22 years, Hancock projected the sort of certitude that
made him just the man to speak to an ugly allegation. Hence, Reuben
Arnold opened his examination by inquiring: "Have you made a physical
examination of Leo M. Frank?"

276 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"Yes."

"Is he normal?"

"I have examined the private parts of Leo M. Frank and found nothing
abnormal. As far as my examination disclosed he is a normal man sexually."

Having thereby gone a long way toward debunking Conley's claim that
Frank "was not built like other men," Arnold directed Hancock's attention
to the substance of Dr. Harris's testimony, swiftly securing one more
learned dissent before turning the witness over to his counterpart.

Dorsey's cross of Hancock was even more worrisome than his examina-
tion of Bachman, for with his very first question, he introduced an issue that
would not only negate any good the venerable physician had done Frank
but would further tarnish the accused's character.

"You don't mean to say," the solicitor commenced, "that homosexuality
is confined to defected patients?"

"In my experience, I have not touched on that line," Hancock responded
in a puzzled tone.

"Didn't you say that you had examined Frank?"

"Yes, but I judged merely from his outward appearance."

"You know but little, then, of homosexuality?"

To this, Hancock could do no more than shrug. Whereupon Dorsey sat
down, having brazenly sailed another line of objectionable questioning past
the defense.

Realizing, albeit belatedly, that the state's insinuations regarding Leo
Frank's sexual orientation could not be left unchallenged, Arnold began
the examination of his next witness, Dr. Willis Westmoreland, a socially
well-connected Atlanta physician, by demanding: "Did you at our request
on yesterday examine Leo M. Frank?"

"I did."

"Did he appear to be a normal male human being?"

"From the examination of the private parts of Leo M. Frank he appears
to be a perfectly normal man."

Having thus elicited at least a reaffirmation of Hancock's findings on this
point, Arnold steered Westmoreland to the topic of Dr. Harris's autopsy
report, securing not only one more denunciation of the health board secre-
tary's work but getting into the record a vital yet heretofore unpublicized
fact: Harris had discarded Mary Phagan's stomach following his post-
mortem, destroying any opportunity for an independent analysis. The usual
custom, declared Westmoreland, was to save at least a portion of such
organs.

Though Westmoreland's testimony seemed irrefutable, Dorsey was not
deterred. Right out of the chute, the solicitor honed in on the fallacy of

DEFENSE 277

judging a book by its cover, inquiring: "Aren't sexual inverts normal so far
as physical structure is concerned?"

"Yes."

Plainly, Dorsey was not going to let the issue of Frank's purported
deviancy drop. Yet he briefly put it aside, concluding his questioning by
grilling Westmoreland regarding his relationship with Harris. As it turned
out, the witness, while serving as president of the Georgia Board of Health,
had instigated an investigation into Harris's response to a malaria outbreak
in the central part of the state. When the probe exonerated Harris, West-
moreland had resigned from the board. The solicitor's point could not have
been clearer: Westmoreland's criticism of Harris's handling of the Phagan
autopsy grew out of a professional grudge.

During his redirect examination of Westmoreland, Arnold did what he
could to ameliorate the damage, obtaining the physician's assertion that he
bore Harris no ill will. Their dispute had been purely scientific. That said,
the lawyer took a shot at discrediting an insinuation rooted in Conley's tes-
timony, asking whether trauma of the sort evident in Mary Phagan's sexual
organs could have been inflicted by cunnilingus. Replied Westmoreland:
"The human tongue could not produce any signs of violence in the vagina."

As Monday's final witness, Arnold summoned a renowned accountant to
reiterate the most significant portion of Herbert Schiff s testimony. Joel
Hunter's Atlanta-based business attracted clients from across the country,
and by his calculations, Leo Frank could not have completed the 150
distinct computations involved in the preparation of the pencil factory's
weekly financial sheet in under 172 minutes. Not surprisingly, Dorsey vigor-
ously challenged Hunter's assessment, demanding to know whether the
superintendent's familiarity with plant operations might have enabled him
to balance the numbers more quickly. But to the solicitor's chagrin, the
accountant replied that Frank's superior knowledge probably caused him
to take longer, as at the bottom of every column, he had to stop and con-
sider what the results meant in terms of the performance of various depart-
ments and the status of outstanding orders. Hunter's assertions lent further
legitimacy to Frank's version of his activities on the afternoon of the mur-
der. Which was why, despite the session's many reversals, the Constitution
termed it "the best the defense has thus far had."

Tuesday morning opened with yet another accountant on the stand. Ac-
cording to C. E. Pollard of the American Audit Company, the pencil fac-
tory's weekly financial sheet was even more complicated than Joel Hunter
allowed, involving 209 computations and requiring 191 minutes to prepare.

278 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

While Pollard did contradict Hunter on one key point, conceding dur-
ing Frank Hooper's cross that "a man can do his own books more quickly
than a third party," in the end, his testimony more than confirmed the
defense's contention regarding the task's time-consuming nature. Now
Reuben Arnold needed to verify that Leo Frank did not start the job on
April 26 until after returning to his office from lunch. Which was why he
called the stenographer for the Montag Brothers Paper Company as the
day's second witness.

Unlike most of the women summoned thus far during the trial, Hattie
Hall was a brisk and efficient professional, and no sooner had she taken her
seat than she was telling Arnold that Frank had practically begged her
to come in on April 26, informing her "that he had work that would take
him until 6 o'clock." Though Hugh Dorsey objected to the stenographer's
recounting of the superintendent's comment, Judge Roan overruled him,
enabling Hall to go on at greater length. As she told it, her first conversation
with Frank that Saturday had occurred early in the morning by phone when
she'd advised him that her duties at Montag Brothers— her primary respon-
sibility—were such that she wouldn't be able to get away. Yet by 10 a.m.,
when Frank appeared at the paper factory to pick up the mail and again
asked for help, she had made enough progress to answer affirmatively, and
sometime between 10:30 and 11:00, she made the five-minute walk to
Forsyth Street. Upon reaching Frank's office, Hall said she'd immediately
pitched in, filling out a number of order acknowledgments and taking dicta-
tion on several letters, which she then typed and handed to Frank for his
signature. Altogether, she added, the tasks had required about an hour.
Having thus traced Hall's activities on the day of the murder until nearly
noon, Mister Rube handed her the critical document.

"Was Frank doing any work on this financial sheet when you were there
that morning?" he inquired.

"No, sir. Throughout the time I was there, he did no work on the financial
sheet."

This was the response Arnold had been seeking, and on its strength he
sat down.

During his cross-examination, Dorsey tried to induce Hall to admit that
she really wasn't sure what Leo Frank had been doing in his office between
1 1 and noon on April 26, but she held her ground, asserting: "When I was in
there he was at work on a pile of letters." Similarly, when the solicitor
attempted to get the stenographer to concede that Frank had spent previ-
ous Saturday mornings preparing the financial sheet, she again resisted,
maintaining that on the occasions with which she was familiar, the superin-
tendent had never done so. Then there was the matter of a $4.50-per-week
pay hike Hall received on August 1. The obvious implication here was that

DEFENSE 279

Sig Montag had given the raise to influence its recipient's testimony. Once
more, however, Hall demurred, responding that the increase had long been
scheduled and was, in truth, a condition of her employment. Whereupon
Dorsey returned to his seat.

For Arnold, Hall was the perfect witness— competent, steady and
informed— and during his redirect, he used her to even more telling effect.
First, in answer to a question regarding whether Frank had telephoned any-
one while she was in his office on April 26, the stenographer stated that he
had called a salesman named Harry Gottheimer and suggested that he drop
by after lunch. Then Rube asked whether the superintendent said anything
to Hall before she departed for the day. "He asked me," she replied, "to stay
all afternoon and help him, that he was busy." Neither of these actions was
consistent with the thinking of a man planning a midday tryst. And that, of
course, was the point.

After his success with Hall, Arnold shifted his focus from the Saturday
of the murder to the Saturdays that preceded it, summoning a series of
witnesses whose sole function was to discredit the testimony of C. Brutus
Dalton. Each of these individuals, all of whom were from Dalton's home
county east of Atlanta, was, in the Constitution's phrase, "a sturdy farmer or
fairly well-to-do citizen," and none of them had a good thing to say about
the man the state had put up to substantiate Jim Conley's charges regarding
Leo Frank's past liaisons. To a one, they said they would not believe Dalton
on oath. Confronted by such unanimity on the subject, Hugh Dorsey de-
clined to conduct a single cross-examination.

Next up for the defense was the National Pencil Company's 14-year-
old office boy. Arnold's hope was that Alonzo Mann, who though he'd
worked only half a day on April 26 typically remained on the premises until
4 p.m., could further undermine Dalton's and Conley's allegations regarding
Frank's Saturday afternoon assignations. But while the youngster stated that
he'd never seen Dalton around the place, much less witnessed Frank bring-
ing women in for drinks, and while Dorsey, during a brief cross-examination,
failed to shake these assertions, his testimony was marred by the fact that he
seemed unduly nervous. Noted the Journal: "He was frightened by his expe-
rience in court, and the stenographer had difficulty in hearing his answers."

Following on the heels of the halting and shy Alonzo Mann came a confi-
dent and effusive factory inspection department employee who, as he
approached the stand, stopped at the defense table and made a sweeping
bow to a beaming Leo Frank. As it turned out, Wade Campbell's testimony
would give the accused even more reason to smile. As the brother of Mrs.
Arthur White, he was in a position to recount his sister's original assertion as
to what she'd witnessed at the plant during her critical midday visit on April
26. "She told me," he informed Arnold, "that she had seen a negro sitting at

280 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

the elevator shaft at 12:00 on Saturday." During the state's presentation of
its testimony, Mrs. White had, of course, maintained that the hour was 1 p.m.
For the prosecution, Campbell presented a familiar problem, and
Dorsey confronted it in a familiar way, emphasizing the witness's sympa-
thies for Frank. Hence, Campbell was soon revealing that he had formerly
been roommates with one of Frank's principal partisans, assistant plant
superintendent N. V. Darley. Yet notwithstanding this admission, Campbell
did not waver during the solicitor's repeated attempts to get him to say that
his sister had told him she'd seen a Negro sitting near the factory elevator
shaft not at 12:00 but at 1:00. Again and again, Campbell repeated that the
time she'd stated was noon, leaving Dorsey with little choice but to sit
down, whereupon Judge Roan gaveled the morning session to a close.

Of all the testimony the prosecution had presented to bolster its allegation
that Leo Frank had intentionally lured Mary Phagan to his office on April
26, none had been more persuasive than that of Helen Ferguson, and it was
in the hope of countering her claim that the defense began Tuesday after-
noon's session by putting up yet another factory girl:

Getting right to the point, Reuben Arnold asked Magnolia Kennedy,
"Were you there when Helen Ferguson drew her pay Friday night?"

"Yes. I was behind her, and had my hand on her shoulder."

"Was Mr. Frank there?"

"No."

"Who was there?"

"Mr.Schiff."

"Did she ask Mr. Schiff for Mary's money?"

"No."

"Would she have had any business going to Frank for Mary's money
when Schiff paid off?"

"She wouldn't have any."

Having thus scored what the Journal termed "a direct contradiction of
Helen Ferguson's testimony," Arnold was done.

Hugh Dorsey responded to the Kennedy girl's injurious revelations by
changing the subject, using the witness to introduce a damaging assertion
that the defense had thus far managed to keep out of the record:

"Were you at the pencil factory on Monday, April 28?" he inquired.

"Yes, sir."

"Did you discover any hair around the metal room anywhere?"

DEFENSE 28l

"Mr. Barrett discovered some on the lathe."
"You identified it, didn't you?"
"Yes. It looked like Mary's hair."

With that, the solicitor directed Magnolia's attention to the substance of
what she'd told Arnold, obtaining not only her admission that she had not
been with Helen Ferguson every hour of Friday, April 25, but her conces-
sion that workers who missed their pay sometimes collected it from Frank.
Considering how the Kennedy girl's testimony started, Dorsey had reason
to feel pleased that this was how it ended.

In the wake of Magnolia's appearance, the defense called the pencil fac-
tory's former office boy. A self-assured 15-year-old, Philip Chambers was
the antithesis of Alonzo Mann, and after establishing that he had always
remained in the building on Saturday afternoons until 4:30, Arnold sought
his point-by-point rebuttal of Dalton and Conley's allegations regarding
Frank's weekend activities. The boy's responses:

"Mr. Frank never did have any women in there."

"I never saw any drinking there."

"I have never seen Dalton come in there."

"I have never seen anybody watching the door on any Saturday that I
was there."

"I have never seen Mr. Frank familiar with any of the women in the
factory."

"I have never seen him talk to Mary Phagan at all."

For Dorsey, Chambers's myriad refutations constituted a genuine threat,
yet rather than attack any of the particulars, the solicitor again reversed
fields, returning to the volatile topic that had obsessed him the previous
day:

"You and Mr. Frank were pretty friendly, weren't you?" he began.

"Just like a boss should be."

"Did you ever complain to J. M. Gantt that Frank had made improper
advances to you?"

"No, sir."

"You didn't tell Gantt that Frank had threatened to discharge you if
you did not comply with his wishes?"

"No."

As Dorsey started to pose yet another question on the subject, Reuben
Arnold at last objected, moving to rule out everything that had just been

282 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

said. Not surprisingly, the solicitor countered, arguing that he had a right to
show the relationship between the witness and the accused. At this, an
incensed Arnold rose to his feet and facing the bench declared:

It's the most unfair thing I've ever heard of in a court proceeding. It's the
vilest slander that can be cast upon a man. If courts were run this way it
could be brought against any member of the community— you, me or the
jury. No man can get a fair showing against such vile insinuations. If this
comes up again, I will be tempted to move for a new trial.

Judge Roan's decision to strike the entire exchange from the record
could not have been more cut-and-dried, but whether in so doing he
removed it from the jurors' minds was hard to say. Either way, with this
avenue of inquiry closed, Dorsey returned to his seat, allowing Chambers
to depart.

Minola McKnight's repudiation of her infamous affidavit regarding Leo
Frank's comings and goings on April 26 and the atmosphere in the family's
household during the succeeding days had, of course, been given the widest
circulation. Nonetheless, the Negro cook's story focused such a damning
light on the methods employed in the case by the Atlanta police— not to
mention undermining the state's time line— that Arnold chose this moment
midway through the afternoon to put her on the stand. The decision was
inspired, for within minutes Minola was indignantly describing her mis-
treatment at the hands of the detectives, recounting how they had thrown
her in what with inadvertent aptness she called "the control wagon" and
driven her to headquarters, where they "worried and threatened" her until
she made a false statement. The truth, she reaffirmed, was that Frank, just as
he maintained, had returned home for lunch on the day of the crime at 1:20
p.m., eaten his meal, then left at 2:00. As for her charges of subsequent wor-
risome activity at 68 Georgia Avenue, she once more disavowed them, too.

During his cross-examination of Minola, Dorsey— as he'd done when
news of her renunciation broke— invoked the name of Albert McKnight,
demanding to know whether this figure had not simply "confronted" her
with "what you had told him about things you had seen and heard around
the house." Yet as she'd done before, the woman denounced her husband,
his coworkers at Beck & Gregg Hardware and the detectives. These men,
she reasserted, had tried to get her "to tell a lie," keeping her "locked up"
until she did. So insistent and unwavering was Minola in this contention
that the solicitor had little choice but to cede the floor.

No sooner had Dorsey sat down than Arnold summoned a pair of wit-
nesses whose purpose was to resume the assault on Jim Conley. Corinthia
Hall and the young woman who followed her, Emma Clark, were the

DEFENSE 283

factory foreladies who, according to Conley, had appeared at the plant
office on the afternoon of April 26 in the immediate aftermath of Mary
Phagan's murder, necessitating his hasty banishment to a sweaty wardrobe.
But as they both told it, while they did visit the building that day, they
arrived at 11:35 A - M - an( 3 left about 11:45, which meant, of course, that
they'd come and gone well before the crime occurred, well before Leo
Frank, even if he were the killer, would have needed to hide an accomplice.
The women's stories were replete with so many convincing specifics (each
recalled seeing Hattie Hall, who went home at noon, at work at the super-
intendent's desk) that in the space of just a few minutes they had negated
one of Conley's most vivid claims, in the process raising doubts as to the
credibility of his entire account. Which explains why Hugh Dorsey, resort-
ing to a favorite strategy, let their testimony enter the record essentially
intact, asking Hall just a couple of unavailing questions, then waiving his
right to cross-examine Clark. From the solicitor's vantage, the less said
about any of this, the better.

Arnold called Lucille's parents as Tuesday's final witnesses, and first
Emil, then Josephine, Selig testified that Leo Frank had exhibited no anxi-
ety either at lunch on April 26 or at a poker party later that evening. In fact,
they maintained, he'd been cheerful and lighthearted; both recalled that
during the card game, he'd delighted the table by reading aloud a humorous
item from Metropolitan magazine concerning the misadventures of a base-
ball umpire. Finally, the Seligs swore that they could not remember the
telephone— which Arnold took pains to emphasize was downstairs in the
dining room— ringing early the next morning, contending that once they
and their daughter and son-in-law were upstairs with bedroom doors shut,
the device was difficult to hear.

Lucille's parents hardly seemed targets for a productive cross-
examination, but Dorsey, perceiving a point of vulnerability, promptly
elicited damaging admissions from them regarding their understated reac-
tions to the news of Mary Phagan's death.

"Do you mean to tell this jury," the solicitor demanded of each, "that a
girl had been found murdered in the basement of the factory of which your
son-in-law is the superintendent and yet you paid no attention to anything
said about it?"

"Yes," the Seligs in turn replied, conceding that on the Sunday the body
was discovered, the crime went undiscussed in their house.

For Dorsey, there could have been no better stopping point, but before
Mrs. Selig could step down Arnold, realizing that he had to do something,
leaped to his feet.

"The facts in this case were harrowing, and you didn't want to know
about them, and you were ill, besides?"

284 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"Yes."

"You had an operation the next day, did you not?"

"Yes, I was ill."

In the end, however, what had been said had been said, and the day con-
cluded with the impression having registered that Leo Frank's well-known
Atlanta family had responded callously to an unknown child laborer's
death.

Though Wednesday began with Reuben Arnold summoning still another
respected physician to take issue with Dr. Harris's findings, then putting up
one more batch of small-town elders to cast aspersions on C. Brutus Dal-
ton's veracity, by midmorning the proceedings had reached a critical turn-
ing point, for it was at this juncture that the defense called its first character
witness.

A 15-year acquaintance and Pratt Institute classmate of Leo Frank,
Alfred J. Lane, had journeyed to Atlanta from New York, where he worked
as a merchant, to deliver but one piece of testimony, and he did it, noted
the Journal, "with emphasis," proclaiming the defendant's character to be
excellent.

Immediately following Lane to the stand came several other equally
enthusiastic New Yorkers, among them another of Frank's classmates from
Pratt and one from Cornell. Like their predecessor, these old friends all
spoke highly of the accused factory superintendent, but ultimately, the con-
tent of their testimony was of less import than the fact of their appearance,
which signaled that the long-anticipated battle over that most subjective
determination, a man's good name, had begun.

Not that there weren't several remaining rounds that the defense in-
tended to fire at the substance of the state's case. Once the last of this initial
group of character witnesses stepped down, Arnold briefly resumed his
attack by calling a time and motion expert to discredit Jim Conley's claim
that he and Frank had dragged Mary Phagan's body from the factory metal
room to the elevator, transported it to the basement, then concocted the
murder notes in under half an hour. As Dr. William Owens told it, studies
he'd conducted at the plant using stand-ins for the alleged participants and
a 107-pound bag of sand for the victim proved that the task would have
required at least 36 minutes. Which meant that had the two begun, as Con-
ley maintained, at 12:56 p.m., it would have taken them until at least 1:32—
nearly a quarter of an hour after the superintendent arrived home for
lunch. Though Frank Hooper, in his cross-examination, succeeded in get-
ting Owens to concede that because he'd been fiddling with a stopwatch

DEFENSE 285

during his experiment, the actual events could have unfolded more rapidly,
the main point remained intact— time wise, the Negro's account did not
add up.

Hard upon Owens's appearance, Arnold summoned yet another former
factory office boy. Sixteen-year-old Frank Payne's task was to complete the
demolition of one of Conley's most colorful allegations, and he promptly
obliged, informing Mister Rube that on Thanksgiving 1912, he'd worked
alongside Jim at the plant and that the two had finished their tasks and
departed by 10:30 a.m. In short, the Negro was simply not on the premises
during the hours he claimed Frank was alone in the office with the white-
shoed woman. True, in his cross-examination, Dorsey forced Payne to admit
that he had not actually seen Conley leave the building that holiday morn-
ing, but in the end, this concession was of minor note. The boy's testimony
had achieved its purpose.

Then came Lemmie Quinn, who was on the stand when court adjourned
for lunch Wednesday and back when it reconvened, rehashing the story of
his surprise appearance at the factory on the afternoon of April 26. After
eliciting Quinn 's account of finding Frank working at his desk around 12:20,
thereby casting more doubt on the state's murder-day chronology, Arnold
turned his attention to the motivation of one of the case's most debated fig-
ures, inquiring: "Did Mr. Barrett ever make any statement to you as to the
reward if Mr. Frank should be arrested?"

"Yes, he mentioned it several times."

"What sums, if any, did he mention to you?"

"He mentioned $2,700 and $4,500."

"How many times did he mention the reward to you?"

"I don't remember. It was so numerous that I can't recall them."

Dorsey went after Quinn with a vengeance, but while he managed to get
him to repeat the well-known yet still vexing fact that Frank had initially
not remembered his April 26 visit, and though he secured the further
admission that Quinn had not mentioned the visit to the police until a week
after the slaying, he could not shake him regarding the essential point. He
steadfastly maintained that he'd dropped by the factory and found the
superintendent immersed in work near the hour the prosecution contended
little Mary met her death.

This renewal of the defense's onslaught on the state's case notwithstand-
ing, one needed to look no further than the afternoon's principal witness to
realize how utterly the focus had shifted— and how perilous the new course
would be. John Ashley Jones was an Atlanta representative of the New
York Life Insurance Company. Eighteen months before Mary Phagan's
murder, he had ordered a report on Frank preparatory to writing a policy.

286 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

The results, he told Arnold, had proven the factory superintendent to be
"first class physically as well as morally." Responding to the lawyer's final
question, the agent swore that Frank's character was good.

If there were any doubts as to how Hugh Dorsey planned to combat such
testimony, his cross-examination of Jones laid them to rest. "Mr. Jones," the
solicitor began, "don't you know of Frank's relations with the girls down
there at the factory?"

"I have never heard any talk of Mr. Frank's practices with the girls
there," replied the insurance agent.

"Then you didn't hear that he took girls in his lap down there at the fac-
tory?"

Before Jones could answer, Arnold was on his feet. "That is outrageous,"
he shouted. "I shall move for a mistrial if such a question is asked again. It is
unjust and prejudicial that the gossip of crack-brained extremists should be
allowed to come before this jury."

Countered Dorsey: "I'm not four-flushing. I'll bring witnesses here to
prove all I have charged."

Following a moment's consideration, Judge Roan— bound by the fact
that the defense had introduced the issue of character— rejected Arnold's
objection. Whereupon the solicitor resumed his questioning of Jones,
demanding: "You never heard that Frank went to Druid Hills with a little
girl, did you?"

"No."

"Didn't you hear about twelve months ago of Frank kissing girls and
playing with the nipples of their breasts?"

At this, Rae Frank rose from her seat at the defense table and shaking a
trembling finger at Dorsey shrieked: "No, nor you either." The suddenness
and intensity of the outburst brought the trial to a halt as spectators, oblivi-
ous to the judge's rapping, rushed to the rail. Meanwhile, the elder Mrs.
Frank, defying the family members attempting to restrain her, kept up her
tirade. Later, it would be widely reported that she cast aspersions on the
solicitor's faith, dismissing him as either a "Gentile dog" or a "Christian
dog." But the confusion was such that her exact words were lost. All that
can be said for certain is that once order was restored and the woman was
led from the courtroom, she could be heard to sob, "My God, my God."

Rae Frank's indignant eruption served merely to goad Dorsey on. In
fact, no sooner had she been packed into a taxi and sent to her in-laws'
Georgia Avenue home than the solicitor picked up where he'd left off, ask-
ing Jones: "Did you ever hear L.T. Coursey or Miss Myrtice Cato say Frank
would walk into the dressing room without offering any explanation for his
intrusion?"

"No," came the reply.

DEFENSE 287

"You didn't hear how he stood and looked at poor little Gordie Jack-
son?"

"No."

"You didn't hear what he tried to do to Lula McDonald and Rachel
Prater?"

"No."

"You didn't hear what he said to Mrs. Pearl Darlson when he stood talk-
ing to her and her daughter with money in his hand, and you didn't hear
how she hit him with a monkey wrench?"

"No."

Following several similarly insinuating queries, Dorsey sat down, and
shortly thereafter, court adjourned for the day. Subsequently, Arnold
termed the solicitor's behavior vile and slanderous. Dorsey, on the other
hand, viewed himself as the aggrieved party, telling reporters: "They have
abused me." Either way, something poisonous had entered the air. Boomed
the banner atop the next morning's Constitution:

MOTHER OF FRANK DENOUNCES SOLICITOR IN COURT

The first hour of Thursday's session found each side seeking relief from
Judge Roan for what both perceived as the excesses of the previous after-
noon. Before the jury was seated, Hugh Dorsey requested that Rae and
Lucille Frank be excluded from the proceedings for the duration, while
Reuben Arnold asked that the testimony of John Ashley Jones be stricken
from the record. "I appreciate the feelings of the wife and mother of the
defendant," stated the solicitor, "but there is going to be much more testi-
mony that will be very objectionable to them. I must ask your honor's pro-
tection." Responded Frank's counsel: "The solicitor's examination of Mr.
Jones yesterday was wholly unwarranted and much more reprehensible
than the act of this man's mother. He tried to get before the jury in an ille-
gal way acts he could not get before it in a legal way. The jury system is very
lame if this sort of evidence is admitted." As it turned out, however, Roan
disappointed all comers, ruling that the two Mrs. Franks could remain while
overruling the objection to Jones's testimony. At which point the twelve
men who would determine the defendant's fate filed in, and the examina-
tion of witnesses resumed.

With a cooling-off period in order before the topic of Leo Frank's char-
acter was reintroduced, the defense chose this moment to buttress the
superintendent's account of his activities during the early afternoon of
April 26. Attesting to the fact that Frank left the factory by 1:10— which
contradicted Conley's allegations— was a stenographer for an Atlanta med-
ical supplies firm. As young Helen Kerns told it, she was shopping at Kress's

288 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

that Saturday and had just looked at a clock in front of a nearby jewelry
store when she noticed the superintendent, with whom she'd once inter-
viewed for a job, standing at the corner of Alabama and Whitehall awaiting
a trolley. Lending credence to this testimony was that of the Franks' across-
the-street neighbor. According to Mrs. Albert Levy, she was sitting on her
porch at 1:20 when she saw Leo get off the car and walk into his home. The
state did its best to discredit these witnesses, but to no avail.

Frank's version of his preprandial peregrinations on April 26 thus
corroborated, the defense sought to better establish his movements a bit
later on. From Lucille's Athens kin, Jerome and Mrs. M. G. Michael, and
from Hennie Wolf sheimer— all of whom were standing outside Mrs. Wolf-
sheimer's house a few doors from the Franks' that Saturday afternoon—
Arnold confirmed that following lunch Leo boarded a 2:00 trolley back
to town, a fact that gave the lie to Albert McKnight's claim of an earlier
departure. Reinforcing this point, Rebecca Carson, forelady of the pen-
cil company's sorting department, swore that she saw Frank near Rich's
Department Store around 2:25 and then at Jacob's Pharamacy ten minutes
later. Here again, the state failed to shake any of these witnesses. Moreover,
Carson provided the defense with an ancillary victory by relating a story
about some suspicious behavior on Jim Conley's part the Monday after
Mary Phagan's murder. As she told it, several factory employees were dis-
cussing the crime and their whereabouts at the time it occurred. When Con-
ley's turn to speak came, she said he announced: "I was so drunk I don't
know where I was or what I did." Later in the same conversation, she
added, Conley quit the room when someone offered that the killer was
most likely the Negro whom Mrs. Arthur White had spotted at the bottom
of the plant stairwell on the day of the tragedy.

Momentum having shifted back to the defense, Arnold secured tributes
to Frank's good character from a Brooklyn lawyer who'd known him since
boyhood and from his Cornell roommate. Though Frank Hooper mocked
the Cornell alum's assertion that his old school chum "associated with the
finest class of students," he failed to damage his or his predecessor's positive
assessments.

Pleased as Frank's lawyers were to have successfully revived their risky
new strategy, there were still a few more pieces of direct evidence they
wanted to get before the jury. Which was why Mister Rube chose to con-
clude the morning's session by summoning the man to whom Frank re-
ported at work.

As principal stockholder in the National Pencil Company and president
of a thriving paper manufacturer, Sigmund Montag was the imperious
embodiment of Atlanta's Jewish elite. The story Arnold elicited from him

DEFENSE 289

initially seemed to cast many of Frank's actions in the immediate aftermath
of the murder in a more sympathetic light. Montag testified that on the
morning Mary Phagan's body was discovered, he was at least as nervous as
Frank. "I was very much agitated and trembled," he allowed. Next, he
addressed the circumstances surrounding how the factory superintendent
acquired legal representation before being charged. As Montag told it, he
was solely responsible. When he heard on the Monday following the crime
that Frank— whom he characterized as being of "very limited acquain-
tance"— had been taken to headquarters, he called Herbert Haas. "Mr.
Haas answered that he didn't like to leave home that morning, that his
wife was expecting a new arrival, so I sent my automobile after him. He
then telephoned for Mr. Rosser." Finally, Montag took on the issue of the
Pinkerton Detective Agency's role in the probe, insisting that in hiring the
firm, the pencil company was only trying to solve the crime.

From the instant Hugh Dorsey began his cross-examination of Montag,
it was plain that he meant to hang him with his own words.

"You say that Frank had a limited acquaintance here?" the solicitor
started off.

"Yes."

"Isn't he president of the B'nai Brith?"

"I think so."

"How many members has that organization?"

"Between 400 and 500, 1 should say."

Montag's rationale for engaging Frank's legal counsel made to appear
implausible, Dorsey turned to the subject of the Pinkerton Agency.

"You were so much interested in this case that you hired the Pinkertons.
And yet you didn't tell the police about their discoveries?"

At this, Luther Rosser broke the silence he'd maintained during the past
few days. But Judge Roan overruled his objection, and Dorsey pressed
ahead, soon enough eliciting the answer that the defense's lead counsel had
seen coming.

"You got the report on the finding of that stick, didn't you?"

"I did."

"And of the finding of that envelope?"

"I did."

"What did you do with these findings?"

"I gave the reports to Mr. Rosser."

With that, Dorsey started in on the matter of Frank's anxiety the morn-
ing the body was found. But before the solicitor could finish propounding
his first question, Montag cut him off. "Mr. Dorsey, don't twist anything I
say."

290 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"He will anyhow," cracked Reuben Arnold in an aside audible through-
out the courtroom.

At which point Dorsey and Arnold charged each other like ballplayers at
the start of a brawl. "For a minute or two," reported the Journal, "a physical
encounter seemed imminent." Eventually, though, the men were separated.

Rosser conducted the defense's redirect examination of Montag, but
aside from securing the fact that there would have been no reason for
him to forward the Pinkerton reports to headquarters, the police having
received their own copies, he could do little to make things better. After he
returned to his seat, court recessed for lunch.

Save for factory worker Harry Denham, who affirmed the defense's con-
tention that the plant elevator had not been run on April 26, the witnesses
who trooped to the stand Thursday afternoon did so for only one reason—
to attest to Frank's good character. The procession began with another con-
tingent of Cornell men. First came John Todd, a classmate who was now a
purchasing agent at the Crucible Steel Company in Pittsburgh. Then C. D.
Albert, a professor of machine design. Then C. E. Vanderhoef, foreman of
the university's foundry. "The loyalty with which Frank's instructors flocked
to his aid" was moving, noted the Constitution, adding, "The sordid sur-
roundings lost some of their grimness as witness and prisoner gripped
hands silently or spoke the few simple words of greeting."

Following these proponents, none of whom Dorsey seriously challenged,
came a second, much larger group comprised almost entirely of Atlanta
Jews. Leading off was Rabbi David Marx, followed by the new Chamber of
Commerce president, Victor Hugo Kriegshaber. Thereafter came lawyer
Max Goldstein, Hebrew Orphans Home superintendent R. E. Sonn, Termi-
nal Station employee Albert Levy and Federation of Jewish Charities sec-
retary Alex Dittler. Here again, most of the testimonials went into the
record uncontested. But in a couple of instances, they did not.

With Arthur Heyman, Hugh Dorsey found himself in the unusual posi-
tion of being given a chance to cross-examine the senior partner in his own
law firm, and he did so with surprising relish, forcing Heyman to concede
that his glowing assertions regarding Frank's character were based on
fewer than seven or eight meetings.

Dorsey saved his toughest cross-examination, however, for Thursday's
final witness. Milton Klein was one of Frank's closest friends, and after
establishing that he'd seen the superintendent at the Tower nearly every
evening since his arrest, the solicitor inquired: "Were you there when Con-
ley sought to confront Frank?"

DEFENSE 291

After Judge Roan sustained Luther Rosser's objection, Dorsey re-
phrased the question: "Tell us, Mr. Klein, did Conley come down there?"

"Yes," replied the witness, and with that, the devastating story that the
defense had until now managed to keep out of the record was suddenly fair
game.

"Did Frank see Conley?" Dorsey began.

"No."

"Did the detectives bring Conley to the front of Frank's cell?"

"Yes. I went to the front and acted as his spokesman."

"Then Frank didn't come out at all? He stayed in the back end of his cell
all the time."

"I said he did not come out."

During Rosser's redirect exam, he elicited the key fact that he had been
out of town at the time in question and had instructed his client to speak to
no one until his return. Nonetheless, Dorsey 's point remained intact— given
the chance, Frank had refused to face his Negro accuser.

On Friday morning, Hugh Dorsey made headlines by announcing that a 16-
year-old Georgia girl named Dewey Hewell had been returned to the city
from the Home of the Good Shepherd (an institution for unwed mothers)
in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was being held at headquarters. Though neither the
solicitor nor Chief James Beavers would reveal the girl's connection to the
proceedings, the meaning of her appearance was unmistakable. As the Con-
stitution reported: "Dewey Hewell has been brought back to give testimony
against Frank."

The morning's other news-generating revelation was that W. H. Mincey,
the insurance salesman who claimed that Jim Conley had confessed Mary
Phagan's murder to him, would not testify. Exactly why Frank's lawyers
decided not to call the much anticipated figure was never sufficiently
explained. Later, Luther Rosser claimed: "The only use we would have had
for Mincey was to contradict Conley, and as Conley got on the stand [and]
contradicted himself enough [we did not need] other witnesses to do it." Yet
considering the buildup, such a rationale was unbelievable. More likely,
Rosser and Arnold had arrived at the conclusion Dorsey had reached early
on— neither Mincey nor his story could withstand scrutiny.

Against this deeply disheartening backdrop, the defense pressed ahead,
opening the day's session by summoning another group of Atlanta Jews to
attest to Frank's good character. By the lunch recess, the jury had heard
platitudes from 40 of the factory superintendent's coreligionists, only two of
whom Dorsey cross-examined.

292 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

In a move plainly intended to enliven a day in danger of degenerating into
a monotonous cataloging of Leo Frank's virtues, Friday afternoon saw the
defense briefly resume its attack on Jim Conley.The initial shots were fired
by the pencil factory's Negro drayman. As peg-legged Truman McCrary, to
whom Conley had referred during his turn on the stand, told Reuben
Arnold, he'd worked at the plant every Saturday during the past three years
and had "never found the front door locked on a Saturday afternoon, never
seen Jim Conley there watching, never seen him guarding the door."

Following McCrary to the stand was another factory Negro. Arthur
Pride was a handyman, and like his predecessor, he said he rarely missed a
Saturday and had never seen "Jim Conley sitting and watching the door."
Moreover, he had some generally disparaging words for the state's star wit-
ness, asserting: "Jim Conley's character for truth and veracity is bad. I
would not believe him on oath."

The state aggressively questioned McCrary and Pride, yet both men held
firm. Indeed, in his examination of the latter, Frank Hooper inadvertently
bolstered the defense's position when, after eliciting Pride's contention that
he did not associate with Conley, he asked: "Jim's not a high-class negro like
you, is he?"

To which Pride convincingly replied: "I ain't a high-class nigger, but I am
a different grade from him."

With that, the defense called another batch of character witnesses— all
of them factory girls. No group of women was in a better position to help
Leo Frank, and Reuben Arnold went enthusiastically to work, securing
from the first to take the stand— polishing department forelady Mary
Pirk— not only an endorsement of the plant superintendent's moral fiber
but a denunciation of Jim Conley's. In fact, Pirk harbored such negative
feelings toward Conley that on the Monday after Mary Phagan's murder,
she told Arnold, she'd accused him of the crime. "He took his broom and
walked right out of the office and I have never seen him since," she recalled.

The moment Hugh Dorsey opened his cross-examination, any thought
that he would show Pirk the deference he'd shown the Cornell grads and
Temple members vanished:

"You say you never heard Frank talked about generally?" the solicitor
started off.

"He was a perfect gentleman to me," the witness replied.
"Well, what did the other girls say about him?"
"I don't remember anything."

DEFENSE 293

"You mean you never heard him accused of any act of immorality?"

"No."

"You mean you've never heard of him watching the girls in the dressing
room?"

"No."

"Did you know Mary Phagan?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever see Frank talking to her?"

"No."

"You never heard of the time, two weeks before her death, that he had
her in a corner and she was begging him and trying to get away from him?"

"No."

Before Dorsey could again open his mouth, an exasperated Luther
Rosser began to object, but Judge Roan silenced him. "There is no use
repeating objections that have already been ruled on."

Up next for the defense was a young female factory machine operator.
Like her coworker, Iora Small vouched for Frank's character. She also den-
igrated Conley, telling Arnold that in the murder's aftermath the Negro not
only read all the extras but carried himself suspiciously. "He had on an old
Norfolk coat with a belt around it and it buttoned just as tight around his
neck as it could be," she said. "Before that he had gone around there all
open and loose."

On cue, Dorsey went after Small, yet instead of trying to use her to insin-
uate untoward behavior on Frank's part, he took a different tack, inquiring
into her attitude toward Negroes. Her response: "I don't know of any nigger
on earth I'd believe."

"Then you wouldn't believe Newt Lee or Pride or anybody else whose
skin is black? They're all on the same plane?"

"Yes."

Small's point of view was inherently racist, and as he'd done before,
Dorsey took advantage of the opportunity to use this fact against the
defense.

Still, Arnold stuck with the plan, calling one more factory machine oper-
ator to utter one more tribute to Leo Frank and strike one more blow at
Jim Conley. As 17-year-old Julia Fuss told it, not only was the superinten-
dent an exemplary human being but on the Wednesday of his arrest, none
other than Conley had conceded as much. "I talked with Jim," she testified,
"and he told me he believed Mr. Frank was just as innocent as the angels
from heaven."

Here again, to no one's surprise, Dorsey fired right back.

294 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"You never heard of any familiarity of Frank's with any of the girls ... or
boys?"

"No."

The specter of Frank's purported homosexuality once more raised,
Dorsey honed in on Conley's alleged postmurder remark exonerating the
superintendent, implying that the comment was inspired by the Negro's
desire to protect his accomplice. Soon thereafter, the solicitor returned to
his seat, but despite having done some damage, he'd failed to diminish the
defense's accomplishment— three of Mary Phagan's female coworkers had
testified on Frank's behalf.

With late afternoon shadows beginning to fall, Luther Rosser, who since
Arnold's clash with Dorsey had been increasingly handling examinations,
called as the session's last witness the woman whose outburst just 48 hours
before had brought the trial to a halt. Now, however, Rae Frank was, in the
Constitution's words, "perfectly composed," which was no wonder, for her
task was to introduce a piece of evidence that seemed destined to help her
son. The item was a letter Leo had written to his uncle Moses on the after-
noon of April 26, but no sooner had Mrs. Frank started to read it aloud than
Frank Hooper cut her off, terming the document immaterial and inadmissi-
ble. The defense countered by declaring that since Frank had composed the
letter during the period in which the state charged he was committing or
covering up the crime, it could not be more relevant, and Judge Roan con-
curred. Thus court concluded with the defendant's mother, after identifying
the missive as one she had first read in Moses Frank's New York hotel room
on April 28, intoning:

Dear Uncle,

I trust that this finds you and dear Tante well after arriving safely in
New York. I hope that you found all the dear ones well in Brooklyn . . .
Lucille and I are well.

It is too short a time since you left for anything startling to have devel-
oped down here. The opera has Atlanta in its grip, but that ends today . . .

Today was "Yondef ' here, and the thin gray line of veterans, smaller
each year, braved the rather chilly weather to do honor to their fallen com-
rades.

Enclosed you will find last week's report. The shipments still keep up
well . . .

The next letter from me, you should get on board ship. After that I will
write to the address you gave me in Frankfurt . . .

Your affectionate nephew,

Leo M. Frank.

DEFENSE 295

Saturday began with Hugh Dorsey's cross-examination of Rae Frank,
and from the start, it was clear that he meant to make the defendant's
mother regret having dressed him down on Wednesday.

"Do you have any rich relatives in Brooklyn?" the solicitor began.

"No."

"What is the value of your estate?"

"I have no estate."

"What do you live on?"

"We have a little money out at interest."

"How much is that?"

"About $20,000," the increasingly beleaguered-looking woman replied.
Though such a sum did not make Rudolph and Rae Frank wealthy, it was, as
Dorsey knew, more than anyone on the jury had invested. Which was why
he pushed ahead in the same vein, elicting another fact that indicated afflu-
ence: The family owned a house in Brooklyn valued at $10,000. A sense of
the Franks' assets implied, the solicitor inquired into the source of those
assets.

"In what business is your husband?" he asked.

"He is not in business at present."

"Ah, he's a capitalist, is he?" Dorsey pointedly rejoined.

To which Rae Frank sadly shook her head. Whereupon the solicitor took
up the subject of Moses Frank's fortune, eventually forcing the witness to
admit: "He is supposed to be very wealthy."

Though Luther Rosser, in his redirect, did his best to put all of this infor-
mation in a different light, allowing Mrs. Frank to explain that her 67-year-
old husband had earned every penny through hard work and was now so
"broken down" that he'd been unable to come south for his son's trial, the
damage was done. As the Georgian's Old Police Reporter put it: "The
examination of Rae Frank as to the extent of her wealth injected some
vague suspicion into the minds of the jury," echoing Jim Conley's claim that
in the wake of the crime, Leo Frank had said, "Why should I hang, I have
wealthy people in Brooklyn?"

The remainder of the day's abbreviated session saw another procession
of factory girls— all of them in summer dresses and wide-brimmed straw
hats— take the stand to attest to Leo Frank's good character. For the most
part, these young things limited their remarks to a few words, but Sarah
Barnes could not contain herself. "I know Mr. Frank and I don't know any-
thing in the world against him," she cried. "I love my superintendent. I'd be
willing to die for him."

Once again, Hugh Dorsey refused to let such encomiums enter the
record uncontested. During some of his cross-examinations, he posed the
now expected query as to "acts of immorality" on Frank's part. During oth-

296 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

ers, he raised the possibility that various girls had been coached. Yet all
came to naught for the solictor until the very end, which was when it most
mattered.

Eighteen-year-old Irene Jackson, the daughter of an Atlanta police-
man, was Saturday's final character witness, and like her predecessors, she'd
been called to praise Frank, but even during Arnold's questioning, she'd
responded ambivalently, managing merely an "I suppose" when asked if the
superintendent's behavior at work was good. Once Dorsey got hold of her,
she related a series of incidents that, if true, went a long way toward con-
firming the state's thesis.

As the Jackson girl told it, she and a coworker named Emily Mayfield
had been sitting in the factory's second-floor women's dressing room one
day when Frank pushed open the door:

"Were you dressed?" the solicitor asked.

"Yes."

"And Miss Mayfield?"

"She was undressing."

"Miss Mayfield was partly undressed?"

"Yes, she had off her top."

"What did Frank do?"

"He smiled or made some kind of face."

"Did he ever go there any but the one time when you were in there?"

"Yes. He opened the door and looked in one day when my sister was
lying down in there."

"When your sister was lying down?"

"Yes. She had her feet resting on a stool. I was there."

"What did Frank do?"

"He just walked in and walked out."

"Did you ever hear that he often went and looked in at the girls dress-
ing?"

"Yes," the witness replied, detailing a third occurrence— this one involv-
ing yet another worker with her top off —to which she'd been privy.

During his redirect examination of the Jackson girl, a scrambling Arnold
established that the dressing room in question had long been a place where
workers gathered to gossip and flirt through open windows with passing
boys and was subject to spot checks by both foreladies and Frank. Still, such
a reality could not explain away what sounded like unwarranted intrusions
on the superintendent's part. Noted the Constitution: "Miss Jackson['s] tes-
timony that on three separate occasions Leo Frank had opened the door to

DEFENSE 297

the women's dressing room and gazed upon her and others in various
stages of dishabille fell like a thunderbolt in the camp of the defense."

And so the third week of what was now the longest and by general consen-
sus most bitterly fought trial in Georgia's history came to a close. Thus far,
203 witnesses (34 for the state, 169 for the defense) had testified, and the
transcript— which ran to 3,000 legal-sheet pages— exceeded 875,000 words.
Exactly where, after all of this, the case stood was hard to say. In the best
of the weekend's many assessments, the Georgian's Old Police Reporter
asserted that "the defense unquestionably has given the state serious con-
cern in the way it has brought forward the time element and that in sepa-
rate and distinct directions." The Hearst paper's pseudonymous scribe also
believed that Frank's character witnesses, particularly the factory girls, had
achieved their purpose. But even granting that Rosser and Arnold had
established in the jurors' minds that Mary Phagan reached the pencil plant
on April 26 ten minutes later and Frank departed half an hour earlier than
the state maintained and that they had likewise shored up their client's rep-
utation, the Old Police Reporter believed that the defense faced an uphill
climb. First, he noted, "It is unique in the annals of judicial procedure in
Georgia, as it is contrary to the entire theory of the law, that Leo Frank
should be combatting at one and the same time" both the charge of murder
and the allegation of perversion. The combination, the writer feared, could
prove fatal, and, sounding a theme others would echo, he felt the dilemma
was "the fault" of Frank's own counsel. Then there was the undeniable
power of Conley's testimony as a whole. Declared Hearst's man:

Many people are arguing to themselves that the negro, no matter how
hard he tried or how generously he was coached, still never could have
framed up a story like the one he told unless there was some foundation
in fact.

And if there remains the impression of even a little foundation in fact
the defense is damaged beyond repair.

It gets back to where it started and where it will end— it is Conley pitted
against Frank.

Which was why it was small surprise that over the weekend, Rosser and
Arnold announced that they would put Leo Frank himself on the stand.
Under Georgia law, the defendant in a capital case was permitted to make
an unsworn statement free from cross-examination. Though such a state-
ment consequently lacked the weight of testimony under oath, the jury
could choose to accept it in whole or in part. For Frank, the risk, of course,

298 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

was that the jury could also choose to reject such a statement— or, worse,
hold it against him.

By 7 a.m. Monday, hundreds of Atlantans were lined up outside the old city
hall in hopes of obtaining one of the seats within. Those lucky enough to
gain admission would, however, have to wait for Frank's appearance on the
stand, as the defense devoted the morning to putting a few more pieces of
testimony before the jury. In an effort to reinforce the view that no sexual
activity had been occurring at the factory, Reuben Arnold called Godfrey
Weinkauf, manager of the concern's lead mill, who stated that during the
year prior to Mary Phagan's murder, he'd visited Frank in his office every
other Saturday afternoon and had never seen any women there. Of more
urgent import, Emily Mayfield, one of the workers the superintendent pur-
portedly ogled in the plant dressing room, took the stand to assert that the
incident never happened and to denounce the story's source, Irene Jackson,
as a liar. Finally, though, the session was given over to a valedictory covey of
character witnesses, the majority of them again female employees. For the
most part, Hugh Dorsey refused to challenge these girls. Thus the endorse-
ments of Lillie Mae Goodman, Lizzie Barnes, Grace Atherton, Ida Holmes,
Zellie Spivey and Minnie Smith entered the record intact. Yet as the solici-
tor's cross-examination of one of the last of them demonstrated, he had
merely been biding his time.

"You say you have never heard anything bad about Frank?" Dorsey
asked Lula Wardlaw.

"No."

"You're sure you never heard from Hermes Stanton and H. M. Baker, in
charge of the Hapeville trolley, that Frank had a little girl on the car the Sat-
urday before the murder?"

"No."

"You never heard that Frank had his arm around the girl and tried to get
her off the car and into the woods?"

"No."

With that, Dorsey, having ruined what the defense had hoped would be
a seamless prelude to Frank's big moment, was done. Shortly thereafter,
court adjourned for lunch.

Aside from appearing somewhat pale, Leo Frank exhibited no signs of anx-
iety upon taking the stand at 2:15 Monday afternoon. During the recess,
he'd read over his statement— the bulk of which he'd dictated to Lucille
weeks earlier— while having his throat sprayed by a physician who'd been

DEFENSE 299

treating him for a mild cold. Thus sure of what he intended to say and in
good voice, the superintendent simply started in.

To begin, Frank, who sat with his hands clasped before him and a folder
of notes on his lap, provided a summary of his personal and professional
background: his birth in Texas and his Brooklyn boyhood, his education and
his apprenticeships, his "sojourn abroad" learning the pencil business and
his move to Georgia. Only when discussing his wife did he even obliquely
address the state's charges. "I married in Atlanta, an Atlanta girl," he said.
"My married life has been exceptionally happy— indeed, it has been the
happiest days of my life." Here, Lucille smiled up at her husband from her
seat directly behind the defense table. Yet he did not continue in this rele-
vant and intimate vein, giving instead a description of his responsibilities at
work. "My duties," Frank asserted, "were as follows: I had charge of the
technical and mechanical end of the factory, looking after the operations
and seeing that our product was turned out in quality equal to the standard
set by our competitors. I looked after the installation of new machinery and
the purchase of new machinery. I looked after the purchase of the raw
materials which are used in the manufacture of pencils, kept up with the
market of those materials, where the prices fluctuated, so that purchases
could be made to the best possible advantage."

Rational and authoritative, Frank's intention, according to the Georgian,
was to convince the jury of his high position, then "picture his every move-
ment" during the weekend of the murder, thereby demonstrating "the
physical impossibility of his having committed the crime and disposed of
the body as Conley describes." This demonstration would constitute the
heart of his statement.

Frank opened with an account of his activities on Friday, April 25— a day
that, by his telling, was devoted almost entirely to the preparation of the
factory's payroll. The calculations involved in determining the amounts
owed, a trip to Montag's to execute the necessary checks, a stop at the
Atlanta National Bank to cash the checks, an afternoon spent filling some
200 numbered envelopes with bills and coins and placing them in slots for
distribution at the familiar elevator-lobby window— the superintendent
mentioned each phase of the process. Save for an indirect refutation of
Helen Ferguson's claim regarding her attempt to collect Mary Phagan's
wages ("No one came into my office who asked me for a pay envelope or
for the pay envelope of another"), he avoided any reference to the allega-
tions against him.

Friday dispensed with, Frank shifted to the case's most critical day, and
he did so by stepping down from the stand and placing a sheaf of invoices
that he contended had occupied him on the morning of Saturday, April 26,
on the jury-box rail. Then, with what the Journal described as the earnest-

300 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

ness one can imagine him employing to address a buyer over his desk at the
factory, he gave an explanation of the documents' significance. "Of all the
mathematical work in the office of the pencil factory," he said, "the work I
now have before me is the most important. It is very important that the
prices be correct, that the amount of goods shipped agrees with the amount
which is on the invoice, and that the terms are correct. I know of nothing
else that exasperates a customer more than to receive invoices that are
incorrect."

Frank's presentation, dispassionate and cool, was the antithesis of Jim
Conley's testimony. But rather than continue in this same formal yet acces-
sible manner, the superintendent plunged into the fine points of the dozen
or so invoices. Evidently, he believed he needed to establish that the work
was so involved that it had required him, just as several witnesses had
sworn, to defer the all-important financial sheet until the afternoon. Yet
from the outset, there was something unnerving about the resulting assem-
bly line of details. "The first order here is from Hilton, Hart & Kern Com-
pany, Detroit," he began. Then, mechanically spitting out figures, he added:
"The customer ordered ioo gross of No. 2 of a certain pencil, 125 gross of
No. 3 and 50 gross of No. 4. We shipped 100 gross of No. 2,111 and l / 4 gross
of No. 3 and 49 gross of No. 4. The amount of shipment of No. 3 is short of
the amount the customer ordered. Therefore, there is a suspense shipment
card, as you will notice." Mercifully for the jurors, Frank glossed over the
specifics pertaining to the next few invoices, synopsizing one from S. H.
Kress by saying, "These five and ten syndicates have a great deal of red
tape." But such restraint was atypical, for within minutes he was embarked
on a lengthy discourse on F W. Woolworth's freight policies, which were
complicated, he stressed, by an 86-cent credit that the chain received for
every 100 pounds of merchandise ordered.

And so for the next hour Frank's statement would proceed. After deliv-
ering his initial explication of the invoices as they related to shipping, he
went back through them from a different perspective. "Starting here with
order 7187 and continuing through 7197," he said, "there is a series of ini-
tials, and these initials stand for the salesman who is credited with the order.
In other words, if a man at the end of the year wants to get certain commis-
sions on orders that come in, we have to very carefully look over those
orders and see to whom or to which salesman or to which commission
house or to which distributing agent that order is credited. So therefore, it
takes a good deal of judgment and knowledge to know just to which sales-
man to credit. Sometimes, I have to go through a world of papers to find just
to whom a certain order is to be credited."

Frank's zeal for the arcana of the invoicing chores he claimed to have
performed on the morning of April 26 was made to appear all the more

DEFENSE 301

excessive by what seemed to be a corresponding unwillingness to discuss
the prelunch period's most germane particulars. Yes, he gave what felt like a
full accounting of his trip to and from Montag's to fetch the mail. (The
superintendent did not, however, respond to Conley's charges regarding
the outing. As he saw it, his version of events, due to its inherent logic, would
carry the day.) And yes, he provided what by every indication was a believ-
able description of the 1 1:45 appearance in his office of Corinthia Hall and
Emma Clark, recalling the department in which the girls worked and the
reason they'd dropped by —one of them had left a coat upstairs. But when it
came to the main event— an event he got to only after a tortuous detour
through the letters he'd dictated to stenographer Hattie Hall just before
noon— he had little to say. In fact, his initial comments on the subject that
the jurors and, by extension, all of Atlanta wanted to hear him address
required just a third of a page of transcript:

To the best of my knowledge, it must have been from ten to fifteen min-
utes after Miss Hall left my office, when this little girl, whom I afterwards
found to be Mary Phagan, entered my office and asked for her pay enve-
lope. I asked for her number and she told me; I went to the cash box and
took her envelope out and handed it to her, identifying the envelope by the
number. She left my office and apparently had gotten as far as the door
from my office leading to the outer office, when she evidently stopped and
asked me if the metal had arrived, and I told her no. She continued on her
way out, and I heard the sound of her footsteps and she went away. It was
a few moments after she asked me this question that I had an impression
of a female voice saying something; I don't know which way it came from;
just passed away and I had that impression. This little girl had evidently
worked in the metal department by her question and had been laid off
owing to the fact that some metal that had been ordered had not arrived at
the factory; hence, her question. I only recognized this little girl from hav-
ing seen her around the plant and did not know her name, simply identify-
ing her envelope from her having called her number to me.

That in the wake of months of rampant and scurrilous speculation Leo
Frank would devote a mere 236 words to the encounter at the center of the
mystery struck many as passing strange. Surely, he had more to say on the
matter. And, in truth, he did. Yet as the hundreds sitting in the courtroom
and the thousands across Atlanta snapping up extras would to their further
dismay discover, the superintendent first intended to give a thorough eluci-
dation of the work he insisted he'd done on the financial sheet on the after-
noon of April 26.

In an effort to establish the sheet's significance, Frank introduced this

302 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

portion of his statement by unveiling a box containing the 140 varieties of
pencils manufactured at the Forsyth Street factory. Laid out like candies,
the bright wooden wands with their crisply stamped brand names and brass
caps presented a vast array of colors and types, underscoring the need for
a complex accounting system. The jury, however, barely caught a glimpse
of the display, as Hugh Dorsey promptly objected that the sampler had
not been entered into evidence. Judge Roan concurred, and the exhibit
was removed. The data— as the superintendent consistently referred to it—
would have to speak for itself.

"Now, one of the most intricate operations," Frank began, holding up the
financial sheet for his audience's perusal, was the "working out" of the num-
bers used to establish the cost of raw material. "Wood slats," he apprised
the room, "are figured at 22 cents per gross. Then, we figure rubbers accord-
ing to the character of the pencil manufactured: 6 and l A cents cheapest,

9 cents medium, 14 cents high-grade. Then come the tips. Then the lead,
which is taken from this sheet, multiplying 15 cents for the better lead and

10 cents for the cheaper lead. Then, 5 cents a gross has been figured out
after months of careful keeping track of what we use [for] such materials as
shellac, alcohol, lacquer, aniline, waxent and oils." To no one's surprise, the
superintendent claimed that following lunch on April 26, he'd performed
all of these computations.

This was just the start. Owing either to obliviousness or, as many who
heard him later concurred, to an unwillingness to face reality, Frank would
set forth nearly every category of data charted on the financial sheet.
Regarding an entry headed "Repacking," he explained: "One of the tricks of
the trade, when we have a slow mover, some pencil that doesn't move very
fast, is to take something fancy and put them in with these slow movers. That
is a trick all manufacturers use in packing assortment boxes. We send into
the shipping room and get some pencils which have already been packed
and bring them in and repack them in the display box. Therefore, it is very
necessary in figuring out the financial sheet to notice in detail the amount of
goods packed and just how many of those had already been figured on some
past report. We don't want to record it twice, or else our totals will be incor-
rect. Therefore, showing the amount of goods which were repacked is neces-
sary." At this juncture, the superintendent paused to indicate the line on the
document where the proper notation had been made. Then he added: "That
was figured by me on Saturday afternoon, April 26. It shows right here. That
is my writing right down there: '18 gross 35-X pencils, 10 gross 930-X.' "

Quite apart from issues of motivation, Frank's arrogance here was
astounding. In fact, in the midst of one especially long-winded remark, he
gazed at the paper in his hands and declared: "This sheet, the financial,

DEFENSE 303

I may say is the child of my own brain, because I got it up. The first one
that ever was made, I made out." Whereupon he ran through various
other data— "Investments," "Values," "Fixed Charges"— that the document
allowed him to keep abreast of, boasting that he always knew where the fac-
tory stood regarding everything from the price of labor to net and gross
profits.

By 4:35, when Judge Roan ordered a brief recess, Frank had been ratch-
eting on for the better part of two and a half hours. And while he may have
convinced some of those listening that the work he'd done on the financial
sheet the afternoon of the murder demanded intense concentration, it's
doubtful he persuaded anyone to the related conclusion that he was guilt-
less. Indeed, the more probable reactions were suspicion and disbelief.
Here was a man who for all his reliance on the precise language of manage-
ment seemed to be manifesting a kind of hysteria.

Had Frank ended his statement at this juncture, there can be little doubt
that it would have been judged an unmitigated disaster. Yet finally, he took
up the genuine issues at hand. And he did so in surprisingly human— and
humanizing — terms.

After the recess, Frank addressed the actions he'd undertaken in the
immediate aftermath of Mary Phagan's murder that had made him a sus-
pect in the crime. Regarding his much discussed anxiety on the morning the
body was discovered, he confided:

Gentlemen, I was nervous. I was completely unstrung. Imagine yourself
called from sound slumber in the early hours of the morning, whisked
through the chill morning air without breakfast, to go into that undertak-
ing establishment and have the light suddenly flashed on a scene like that.
To see that little girl on the dawn of womanhood so cruelly murdered—
it was a scene that would have melted stone. Is it any wonder I was
nervous?"

At long last, Frank was attempting to win the understanding of the
twelve men who would decide his fate. Which was why, as he continued his
account of the events that culminated in his arrest, he sought to portray
himself as a victim of both misunderstanding and sloppy and corrupt police
work. As an example of the former, there were the rumors that arose from
the fact that his wife did not visit him during his first days in jail. After
terming such rumors "dastardly," the superintendent attempted to correct
the record, proclaiming:

304 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

The date I was taken into custody, my wife was there. But I thought I
would save her the humiliation of seeing me in those surroundings. I
expected any day to be turned loose and returned once more to her side at
home. Gentlemen, we had to restrain her. She was willing to be locked up
with me.

Then there was the detectives' behavior, particularly during the headquar-
ters encounter designed to force a confession from Lee. After the effort
failed, Frank asserted, John Black and Harry Scott "grilled the negro and
put words into his mouth that twisted not alone [my] English but distorted
my meaning. I decided then and there that if that was the line of conduct
they were going to pursue, I would wash my hands of them." It was in keep-
ing with this choice, the superintendent added, that he refused to meet with
Jim Conley, explaining:

I did not speak to Conley not because I did not want to . . . but because
I didn't want to have things twisted. I knew that there was not a word that
I could utter that they would not deform and distort and use against me.

Slowly, surely, Frank had come alive, and he finished in impressive
fashion:

Gentlemen, I know nothing whatever of the death of little Mary Pha-
gan. I had no part in causing her death nor do I know how she came to her
death after she took her money and left my office. I never even saw Conley
in the factory or anywhere else on that date, April 26, 1913 . . .

The statement of the negro Conley is a tissue of lies from first to last. I
know nothing whatever of the cause of the death of Mary Phagan and
Conley's statement as to his coming up and helping me dispose of the
body, or that I had anything to do with her or to do with him that day is a
monstrous lie . . .

The story as to women coming into the factory with me for immoral
purposes is a base lie and the few occasions that he claims to have seen me
in indecent positions with women is a lie so vile that I have no language
with which to fitly denounce it . . .

Gentlemen, some newspaper men have called me "the silent man in the
tower," and I have kept my silence and my counsel advisedly, until the
proper time and place. The time is now; the place is here; and I have told
you the truth, the whole truth.

Coming at the conclusion of a discourse that had consisted largely of
tedious tabulations and rote recitations, Frank's forceful peroration moved

DEFENSE 305

nearly all who heard it. "Very few in the courtroom had much to say until
they had managed to subdue that troublesome lump in their throats,"
observed the Georgian, Not surprisingly, those most affected were mem-
bers of the superintendent's family, particularly Lucille, who burst into
tears, prompting Leo to descend to her side and take her in his arms. Mean-
time, a stout county deputy dabbed his eyes while juror Marcellus Johen-
ning gave vent to several deep sobs. "That boy put it all over you and me,"
Luther Rosser was heard to mutter huskily to Reuben Arnold as the two
made their way to the door.

The next morning, however, the assessments were decidedly more sober,
for no matter how engaging Frank had been at the end, the fact remained
that taken as a whole, his statement was problematic. Commented the
Georgian's James B. Nevin: "There will be those who see evidence of mon-
strous coldness and unfeeling design." Most telling of all was the news that
Rosser and Arnold had not read the superintendent's remarks in advance.
Like many parts of the lawyers' presentation, this last one had been
made with an apparent lack of regard for either their client's vulnerability
or their own.

TWELVE

All that remained before Leo Frank's fate was consigned to the jury
were the final evidentiary maneuvers and rhetorical flourishes. First
among these was the state's presentation of its case in rebuttal, and
if there were any doubts regarding what its main element would be, they
were dispelled shortly after Tuesday's session opened when Hugh Dorsey
suggested that Lucille and Rae Frank leave the courtroom, as what was to
come "would be embarrassing for ladies to listen to."

Dorsey launched his attack on Frank's character with an examination of
Daisy Hopkins. But the factory superintendent's alleged consort thwarted
the solicitor, continuing to maintain that she possessed no knowledge of any
trysting place in the plant basement. Moreover, when Dorsey attempted
to quiz her regarding what the Journal termed "unprintable" acts she'd
purportedly boasted of performing with Frank, Judge Roan upheld the
defense's objection, declaring: "You cannot bring any new criminal charge
against this defendant."

Still, Dorsey pressed forward, summoning four witnesses who denigrated
the trustworthiness of Hopkins. He followed these with ten witnesses who
lauded the credibility of C. Brutus Dalton, who'd not only connected Frank
to incidents of sexual impropriety but corroborated Jim Conley on the sub-
ject. Then the solicitor, in the Journal's phrase, "sprang a sensation," calling
a former factory employee who swore that regardless of his many denials,
the superintendent knew Mary Phagan:

"Did you ever see Mr. Frank talking to Mary Phagan?" Dorsey asked
1 6-year-old Willie Turner.
"Yes, on the second floor."
"How long was that before the murder?"
"About the middle of March."
"What was said?"

"I heard her say that she had to work."
"What did he say?"
"He said he was the superintendent of the factory."

VERDICT 307

"How was she acting?"

"She backed off from him, and he walked toward her."

After that, the defense objected. "They want to bring out another
charge," roared Reuben Arnold.

But the prosecution held firm. Responding to Arnold's allegation, Frank
Hooper insisted: "It is not true, and it is not the point at issue." Whereupon
the gallery burst into applause. A vigorous rapping from Judge Roan imme-
diately restored order, yet the outburst provided one more indication of
the deteriorating atmosphere. Worse, following a moment's consideration,
Roan allowed l\irner's observations to remain in the record, and though
Luther Rosser, in his cross, got the boy to admit that he could not give a
description of Mary Phagan, the point seemed settled— Frank had been
acquainted with the girl.

The state devoted the bulk of Tuesday's remaining hours to countering
other facets of the defense's case.

From Roy Craven and E. H. Pickett, Albert McKnight's supervisors at
Beck & Gregg Hardware, Dorsey elicited testimony reaffirming the verac-
ity of Minola McKnight's pretrial statement alleging suspicious behavior on
Frank's part in the aftermath of the murder. Swore Craven:

I was present when Minola made her affidavit. I told her that Albert had
said that [she] overheard Mrs. Frank tell Mrs. Selig that [on the night of the
crime] Mr. Frank came home drinking and made Mrs. Frank get out of bed
and sleep on a rug by the side of the bed ... he had murdered somebody.
Minola [confirmed] that this was what happened.

Added Pickett:

Minola . . . said she was instructed not to talk and her wages had been
raised by the Seligs.

Dorsey next introduced several streetcar employees to attest that the
English Avenue trolley that had carried Mary Phagan downtown on April
26 often ran ahead of schedule. The assertions potentially placed the victim
at the factory earlier than had been thought, lending further credence to
the prosecution's murder-day time line. One of the streetcar men, a conduc-
tor named George Kendley, claimed that he'd actually seen little Mary
walking toward the plant before 12:05 on the afternoon of the tragedy,
which would have put her in the superintendent's officer prior to Monteen
Stover's arrival.

308 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

During Tuesday's final hours, Dorsey took a second shot at present-
ing specific allegations of impropriety against Frank by summoning Nellie
Wood— the slatternly former factory worker who'd testified at the inquest
that the superintendent once fondled her breasts. But Judge Roan upheld
the defense's objection, telling the solicitor: "The law shuts you out."
Boomed the headline atop the next morning's Constitution: state is hard

HIT BY JUDGE'S RULING BARRING EVIDENCE ATTACKING FRANK.

From the moment the proceedings reconvened at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Dorsey
could do no wrong. First Roan, over the objections of Rosser and Arnold,
ruled that the solicitor could call witnesses to take issue with the defense's
assault on the state's medical evidence. Minutes later, Dr. Clarence Johnson
and Dr. George Niles seconded Dr. Henry F. Harris's findings regarding the
time of Mary Phagan's death, and Dr. John Funke echoed Harris's determi-
nation that she'd suffered some unspecified form of sexual violence.

Dorsey then struck a blow at the defense's claim that the factory's metal
room floor was frequently stained by the blood of injured workers, calling a
former plant machinist named J. E. Duffy, who testified that when he was
cut in an accident there, his wound was promptly bandaged.

With that, Dorsey reintroduced the topic around which his case in rebuttal
revolved, summoning a young former factory employee named Myrtice Cato :

"Are you acquainted with the general character of Leo M. Frank prior
to and including April 26, 1913?" he asked.
"Yes."

"Was that character good or bad?"
"Bad."

"How long had you worked there?"
"Three and a half years."

With that, Dorsey turned the witness over to the defense. But Rosser,
knowing that if he challenged Myrtice, the solicitor would be permitted to
delve into the particulars upon which her allegation was based, simply told
the girl: "Come down."

Dorsey's next witness was another former factory worker, and she, too,
responded in the affirmative when asked if Frank's general character was
bad. But where with her predecessor, the solicitor had been content to
leave it at this, with Maggie Griffin he would attempt to go further. Indicat-
ing that he knew he was testing the limits, Dorsey informed his witness,
"Now I am going to ask you a question, and I don't want you to answer it
until the judge tells you whether you can or not." Then he inquired: "Are

VERDICT 309

you acquainted with the general character of Leo M. Frank as to his rela-
tions with women?"

Following the expected objection, Judge Roan sent the jury out, and
the opposing sides faced off. As Rosser saw it, the court had already
found against such testimony. "This, however, is different," replied Dor-
sey. Though he vowed to abide by Roan's ruling as far as specific incidents
were concerned, he contended that the defense, by examining several girls
regarding Frank's overall conduct with them, had itself broached the
broader subject. Furthermore, he asserted that one of the female witnesses
put up by the the defense had once disappeared into a plant dressing room
with the superintendent. That witness: Rebecca Carson. According to the
solicitor, the law granted him the right to use Griffin to rebut Carson's attes-
tations. For Roan, Dorsey 's logic was persuasive, although the judge ordered
him to refrain from posing queries about Carson until she could be recalled.
With that, the jury returned, and the solicitor picked up where he'd left off:

"Do you know the general character of Leo M. Frank as to his attitude
toward women?" Dorsey again asked Griffin.
"Yes, I do."
"What is it?"
"Bad."

Owing to the fact that Carson could not be immediately located, the
solicitor at this point turned Griffin over to Rosser, who once more refused
to cross-examine.

The bill for placing Frank's character in evidence had come due, and
Dorsey intended to see that it was paid in full. The morning's remaining
hours would see a steady parade of former factory employees take the
stand to level essentially unchallenged blows to the superintendent's repu-
tation as it pertained to female workers. To each of these women and girls,
the solicitor posed the same question: "Do you know Mr. Frank's character
for lasciviousness?" And from each he received the same answer:

"Bad," declared Mrs. C. D. Donnegan.

"Bad," declared Mrs. H. H. Johnson.

"Bad," declared Marie Karst.

"Bad," declared Nellie Pettis, echoing her testimony at the coroner's
inquest.

"Bad," "bad," "bad," "bad," added Mary Davis, Mary Wallace, Estelle
Winkle and Carrie Smith.

Throughout this ordeal, Frank's lawyers sat on their hands.

310 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

And Dorsey wasn't done. He called two former factory employees to
corroborate Willie Turner's testimony that Frank had been acquainted with
Mary Phagan. First came young Ruth Robinson, who swore that she'd once
seen the superintendent stop at little Mary's workplace and show her how
to insert an eraser into a nearly completed pencil. Then came Dewey
Hewell, the 16-year-old whose return to Atlanta the week before from
a Cincinnati home for unwed mothers had sparked headlines. After es-
tablishing that the girl had been employed at the pencil plant during the
months preceding the murder, the solicitor inquired:

"During the time you worked there did you know Leo M. Frank?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you know Mary Phagan?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever see Frank talking to Mary Phagan?"

"Yes."

"How often?"

"Sometimes two or three times a day."

"What did you see him do?"

"I saw him put his hand on her shoulder."

"Did he call her by any name, and if so, what?"

"Yes, sir. He called her Mary."

"Where did he stand when he spoke to her?"

"He would stand close to her."

Though Rosser at least examined Robinson and Hewell, he did so tenta-
tively, doing no more than ascertaining that little Mary was always in the
company of a group of employees when the two saw Frank talking with her.

By the time the defense finished with Robinson and Hewell, Rebecca
Carson had made her way to court. Dorsey had only one question for her:
"Did you ever go into the dressing room on the fourth floor with Leo M.
Frank?"

"No," she answered emphatically.

After Carson stepped down, Dorsey surprised Rosser and Arnold by
calling Myrtice Cato as his initial rebuttal witness. "Did you ever see Miss
Rebecca Carson go into the private dressing room on the fourth floor with
Leo M. Frank?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Myrtice.

"How often did you see them go in there together?"

"I never saw it but twice," the girl conceded. Then she added: "That ain't
all I know."

"Wait a minute," shouted Rosser, his face pinkening. Yet just that

VERDICT 311

quickly, the lawyer caught himself, and in a milder tone, he briefly sifted
Myrtice, establishing that on both of the purported occasions, plenty of
other employees, once more, were standing nearby. Not that this was how
the girl's appearance ended. During his redirect examination, Dorsey asked
Myrtice how she happened to have observed Frank and Carson enter the
dressing room. "I was looking up the aisle," she said, then again boasted:
"And that ain't all I saw, either."

Dorsey followed Myrtice with the witness the defense had been
expecting— Maggie Griffin. Like her coworker, Maggie maintained that
she'd seen Frank and Carson disappear into the fourth-floor factory dress-
ing room. "Yes, sir," she said. "Three or four times." Worse, she contended
that they had "stayed in there fifteen to thirty minutes." To this, Rosser suc-
cessfully objected, but as to the larger issue, he again had to settle for the
concession that on the occasions under discussion, "other women were
about."

How Dorsey could do still more damage to Frank on the character issue
was at this juncture difficult to imagine, but he had one last blow to inflict,
and he used the morning's final witness to inflict it. Mamie Kitchens was yet
another pretty factory girl, and after nailing down that she'd worked on the
plant's fourth floor for two years and was still an employee there, the solic-
itor secured the fact that she had not only not been called by the defense to
attest to Frank's rectitude but that several other females in her department
had been similarly ignored. Having thereby implied that the superintend-
ent was fearful of what some members of his current workforce would say
if placed on the stand, Dorsey threw his haymaker, asking: "Were you ever
in the dressing room on the fourth floor with Miss Irene Jackson when this
defendant, Leo M. Frank, came in?"

"Yes," answered Kitchens. "I was in the dressing room with Miss Irene
Jackson when she was undressed. Mr. Frank opened the door, stuck his
head inside. He did not knock. He just stood there and laughed. Miss Jack-
son said, 'Well, we are dressing, blame it,' and then he shut the door."

Though Rosser managed in his cross-examination of Kitchens to estab-
lish that the incident to which she'd referred had occurred during business
hours, such an admission could not soften the impact of either this girl's tes-
timony or that of those who'd come before. Boomed the front-page banner
atop the Georgian's midday edition:

WOMEN ARRAIGN FRANK'S MORALS

While Hugh Dorsey would have been hard-pressed to find a better stop-
ping point, a few other elements of the defense's case still worried him; he
devoted Wednesday afternoon to tying up loose ends. For starters, he sum-

312 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

moned two men who often rode the English Avenue streetcar and swore that
in the days immediately after the murder, W. M. Matthews and W. T. Hollis
had both said that on her last trip, Mary Phagan had sat next to George Epps.
During cross-examinations, Rosser established that one of these witnesses
was the son of a police officer involved in the investigation. Still, the charges
hurt. Dorsey then recalled Boots Rogers and Sergeant L. S. Dobbs, each of
whom maintained that on the morning the body was discovered, they had
checked alternate entrances into the factory basement and found them
"cobwebby and dusty." Having thereby partially undermined the notion that
the victim's remains could have reached the plant's lower level via a route
that contradicted the state's theory, the solicitor summoned several individ-
uals who took issue with Frank's declaration that the much vaunted financial
sheet required three hours to fill out. With that, he was done.

There wasn't much the defense could hope to accomplish during its surre-
buttal. Yes, Rosser and Arnold put up a pawnbroker to attest that one of the
men who'd sworn that Mary Phagan's trolley often reached town ahead of
time had hocked his watch several months before the murder and would
have been hard-pressed to make such a judgment. Yes, they called several
witnesses who asserted that George Kendley, who claimed he'd spotted lit-
tle Mary walking into the factory before 12:05 on the day of the crime, was
an avid anti-Semite who'd been publicly voicing his views. Declared J. M.
Asher: "Kendley was talking real loud and discussing the Frank case and he
suddenly said: 'The damn Jew, they ought to hang him.' " Echoed T. Y
Brent: "Kendley said Frank wasn't anything but an old Jew," and if the court
didn't get him, he knew men who would. And yes, over Dorsey's objection,
Frank was permitted to retake the stand to make an addendum to his
unsworn statement. Proclaimed the superintendent:

In reply to the statement of the boy [Willie Tbrner] that he saw me talk-
ing to Mary Phagan when she backed away from me, that is absolutely
false, that never occurred. In reply to the two girls, Robinson and Hewell,
that they saw me talking to Mary Phagan and that I called her "Mary," I
wish to say that they are mistaken. It is very possible that I have talked to
the little girl in going through the factory and examining the work, but I
never knew her name.

In reference to the statements of the two women who say that they saw
me going into the dressing room with Miss Rebecca Carson, I wish to state
that that is utterly false. It is a slander on the young lady, and I wish to state
that as far as my knowledge of Miss Rebecca Carson goes, she is a lady of
unblemished character.

VERDICT 313

Save for these flurries, the defense was finished, and at 5:30, court
adjourned for the day.

Closing arguments commenced at 9:05 Thursday morning, with the state, in
the person of Frank Hooper, speaking first. That Dorsey let his co-counsel
open was astute. Smooth and reassuring rather than confrontational and
irreverent, elegantly attired as opposed to modestly dressed down, Hooper
was well suited to lay out the case that the solicitor would then attempt to
hammer home.

Starting with the issue of character, Hooper challenged the jurors to
choose between the defense's witnesses and the state's. The girls who'd tes-
tified for Frank were for the most part currently employed at the factory
and therefore, he asserted, susceptible to the superintendent's manipula-
tions. In order to keep their jobs, they'd said what they'd been told to say.
The girls who'd testified against Frank, however, were primarily former
employees and hence free to speak the truth. That was why, Hooper added,
the defense had declined to cross-examine them. Gesturing to Rosser and
Arnold, he declared:

They had the right to inquire of these witnesses on what grounds they
based their opinion of the defendant's bad character. What did they do?
They dismissed the witnesses without making any inquiries.

The disparity between the praises uttered by the defense's character
witnesses and the reproofs voiced by the state's could not, of course, be
explained as merely a function of the National Pencil Company's financial
leverage. Too many men and women over whom the Forsyth Street opera-
tion held no sway had taken the stand on Frank's behalf. And even though
nearly all of these citizens were Jewish, their uniformly high positions in
Atlanta society lent considerable credence to their endorsements. If the
prosecution was to convince the jury that the accused truly was morally
reprehensible, it needed to negate these testimonials, too. Which was what
Hooper now tried to do. Fixing his audience with a confident gaze, he began
by acknowledging the inherent paradox, asserting:

It may seem strange, gentlemen, that a man who associated with
bankers, businessmen and who's the head of a big concern should have
sought out a man like Dalton for company. But have you ever considered
that when he was dealing with a certain side of his life, he sought compan-
ions congenial to those pursuits?

314 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

That said, the lawyer unveiled what for the state would be a defining
metaphor:

You doubtless have read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This defendant, like
Dr. Jekyll when the shades of night come, throws aside his mask of
respectability and is transformed into a Mr. Hyde. And then he does not
seek the companions of Dr. Jekyll, but like Hyde goes to a lower stratum
where he picks up Dalton and his kind and goes with them instead of with
the men who have come here to give him a good character.

The state's stance on Frank's character articulated, Hooper addressed
his next subject, Jim Conley. Here again, he depended largely upon a figure
of speech. The Negro, he averred, was to the case what Stone Mountain— a
massive granite outcropping just east of the city— was to Atlanta: intrinsic
and unavoidable. "I don't blame the defense for pitching their fight on Con-
ley," he said. "They had to break him." For three days, Luther Rosser had
pitted his "wily, trained mind" against that of the "ignorant black man." The
result: like Stone Mountain, Conley still stood. "And why didn't they break
him?" Hooper asked rhetorically. Whereupon he paused, then said:

It was because Conley, after all the lies he had told, eventually had
arrived at the truth, and the truth is stronger than these lawyers.

From the state's vantage, both its star witness's testimony and the allega-
tions concerning character were just part of a broader demonstration of
guilt rooted in accounts of Frank's actions before the murder and in its
aftermath. So now Hooper gave the jurors a selective recapitulation. First,
of course, there was the engagement of Conley as a lookout and his posi-
tioning in the factory lobby on the morning of April 26. Then came Mary
Phagan's arrival. "Without knowing the horrible death that awaited her,"
the lawyer said, "she went blithely to where sat this defendant to get her
$1.20. Since that day, not a word has come from her lips."

At this, little Mary's mother, who at the session's outset had taken a seat
at the prosecution table, began to weep.

With Mary Phagan dead, Hooper declared, Frank focused on the press-
ing matter of disposing the body and concealing the crime. Thus he sum-
moned Conley to the second floor. Despite the superintendent's purported
hand- wringing, the lawyer contended that his initial moves— the transport-
ing of the remains to the basement, the trip to the fourth floor to assure
himself that workers Denham and White remained in the dark and to
escort Mrs. White from the building— were cool and calculating. So, too,

VERDICT 315

were his subsequent actions. He sent Newt Lee away at 4 p.m. to give Con-
ley a couple more hours to return to the factory and burn the body. He
ordered the night watchman to help Gantt search for his shoes because the
fired bookkeeper had been a friend of little Mary's and he didn't want him
snooping around the place. He telephoned Lee from home that evening to
make certain that his handiwork remained undetected. Frank's lone slip —
the murder notes. Asserted Hooper:

The idea that Jim would have written those notes himself is absurd. You
know these negroes. You know their traits. Would one of them have done a
thing like that? What object could Conley possibly have had in planting
those notes by the body saying that a negro had committed the crime?

Come Sunday morning, of course, the state maintained that Frank's
dread had returned. "Even before he was suspected, he showed unmis-
takable signs of nervousness," Hooper reminded the jurors. Yet he soon
regained his sangfroid. Beginning Monday, "he made a concerted effort"
to cast suspicion on Lee. By changing his mind as to whether the night
watchman had correctly punched the time clock in the hours prior to the
body's discovery, the superintendent in effect dispatched Detective Black
to Lee's house "where somebody had planted a shirt." Here, Hooper held
up the garment in question, allowing the twelve men who sat before him
to examine how it "appeared to have been wadded up and wiped in
blood." And if that wasn't proof enough of the garment's fraudulence, the
lawyer, revealing that the prosecution was as willing to play to racial
stereotypes as the defense, proclaimed: "The shirt had no odor of the
negro."

By the state's lights, the shirt found at Lee's home was simply the first
of many defense deceptions. Others included the bloody stick and piece of
pay envelope located in the factory lobby several weeks after the murder.
"There was also," Hooper recalled, "a fellow named Mincey. You remember
that my brother Rosser examined Jim very closely about this man. That
was done, you all understand, for the purpose of laying the foundation to
impeach Jim. The point is: Where is Mincey now? It looked like this whole
fight might turn on Mincey, but we haven't heard one word from him."

With that, Hooper— whose job had been merely to present an outline of
the state's presentation— was essentially done, although he did have a last
point to make: The jurors, far from being distinct from their fellow citizens,
were Everymen. Declared the lawyer: "I have heard men say that they
thought one thing, but when they were on a jury they had to decide another
way, but it was never intended that such should be the case."

3l6 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Reuben Arnold led off for the defense. Where Hooper's job had been to set
a tone, his was that and more. Standing before the bench, he began by
addressing his counterpart's final comment, remarking conversationally:
"My friend Hooper said that a juror is not different from anyone else on the
streets trying to get at the truth." Then he boomed:

God grant that we can get away from the streets. What's the use of hav-
ing juries if we don't. Juries should be set up on a hill, away from the multi-
tude where prejudice and passion cannot reach them.

That after four weeks of crowds outside the courthouse and barely
restrained galleries within, Arnold would start with a plea to the jurors to
resist popular opinion was no surprise. What followed, however, was
startling— the lawyer asserted that the hostility that had dogged Leo Frank
from the outset arose from the fact of his Jewishness.The defense was open-
ing its argument by claiming that religious prejudice against the factory
superintendent had permeated the case. Referring to one of the state's con-
cluding witnesses, streetcar conductor George Kendley, Arnold asserted:

This man Kendley said they ought to hang Frank because he is a Jew. I'd
rather be in Leo Frank's house than his. I'd rather be in Leo Frank's shoes
than his.

Kendley's discriminatory feelings, Arnold noted, were rooted in the fact
that "Frank comes from a race of people that have made money." Further-
more, he added, the streetcar conductor wasn't the only Atlantan who har-
bored such feelings:

I tell everybody, all within the hearing of my voice, that if Frank hadn't
been a Jew he never would have been prosecuted. I am asking my kind of
people to give this man fair play. Before I'd do a Jew injustice, I'd want my
throat cut from ear to ear.

And so the issue that had long been percolating beneath the surface had
come into the light. Frank's prosecution, Arnold charged, was motivated by
anti-Semitism. The lawyer did not, however, linger on the claim, devoting
the remaining minutes before and the hour after the lunch recess to undo-
ing the damage the state had done to the superintendent's reputation.

Much of what Arnold had to say regarding the allegations of moral turpi-
tude against Frank was predictably indignant. He termed C. Brutus Dalton

VERDICT 317

and his ilk "jail birds and convicts, the dregs of humanity," while dismissing
the factory girls who'd denigrated the superintendent's character as "dis-
gruntled former employees." As to the possibility that Frank might actually
have seduced any of his workers, he fairly scoffed: "If he had started some-
thing with one of the girls, demoralization would have reigned in the whole
place. He couldn't have gotten any work out of the other girls, and Montag
would have fired him."

Yet Arnold pitched the bulk of his argument on a higher plane, one pred-
icated on the assumption that the jurors, like himself, were worldly men. In
view of the concerns regarding power, privilege and predation raised by the
Phagan murder, this was a risky tack; in view of the many ugly allegations
that were part of the record, the lawyer had scant choice but to pursue it.

The basic point Arnold hoped to convey was that a majority of the
improper acts attributed to Frank were, in fact, not improper at all. First,
there was what he called "the little dressing room incident," of which he
asked the jurors:

What did it amount to? Wasn't everything done openly and above
board, and in broad daylight? There was no bath in the dressing room, no
toilet, and the girls themselves admit that there had been flirting in that
room. Gentlemen, isn't that exactly the way you'd expect the superinten-
dent of a big factory to conduct himself?

Then there was the charge that Frank had placed his hands on Mary Pha-
gan's shoulders:

You can go out here to Piedmont Park any Sunday afternoon and see
five hundred girls and boys with hardly anything on, and the boys are grab-
bing them by the arms and legs and are having a gay old time. And I don't
mean to say by this that I think the world is going to the dogs. It's a sign
that we are getting more broad-minded, that we are learning some sense
about these matters. And let me tell you something, gentlemen of the jury,
deliver me from one of these prudish fellows that never looks at a girl and
never puts his hands on her and is always talking about his own virtue. He's
the kind I wouldn't trust behind the door.

And then, finally, there was the allegation that the pencil plant itself was a
den of iniquity, with Frank as its corrupting head. To this, the superinten-
dent's co-counsel simply said: "The factory is no better and no worse than
any other factory of about that size in the city of Atlanta."

Arnold's intention here was to relegate all the insinuating testimony
against Frank to the realm of unsubstantiated gossip and to elevate the gen-

3l8 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

eral level of discourse. But lest he fail in this effort, he struck a different
tone in his concluding comments on the superintendent's character:

Gentlemen, we are not claiming perfection for this defendant any more
than we claim it for ourselves or than you claim it for yourselves; and no
more than Mr. Dorsey and his associates should claim it for themselves.
Let the man who is innocent cast the first stone. We are not trying this man
on everything that may have been said about him. We are trying him for
murder.

That said, Arnold launched a wide-ranging assault on the circumstantial
evidence that formed the foundation of the state's case, vowing: "Before I
get through I'm going to show you there never was such a frame-up against
a man since God made the world."

The frame-up got started, Arnold declared, because the authorities at
first believed that Frank was the sole person in the factory at the time of
Mary Phagan's murder who'd had the opportunity to commit the crime.
"Nobody knew that Jim Conley was down there by that elevator hole," he
reminded the jury. Consequently, Detectives Black and Starnes had pur-
sued only those clues that might implicate the superintendent, particularly
the bloodstains and strands of hair located in the building's metal room.
This, insisted the lawyer, was a tragic misstep, for the blood and hair were
plants made by their reward-obsessed discoverer, R. P. Barrett. "Would
Frank have tried to hide the blood by smearing it with haskoline and calling
attention to it?" he inquired. Would a man as meticulous as the superin-
tendent have left the hair in plain sight? "It's the clumsiest botch I ever
saw." But the investigators, he ruefuly added, had made up their minds and
refused to entertain other possibilities.

While the plot's preliminary acts unfolded, asserted Arnold, no one in
Atlanta followed more attentively than Conley. From the newspapers, talk
around the factory and, after his own arrest, talk inside the Tower, the
Negro posted himself on every development. "He had weeks and weeks to
do it. He knew they were trying to make a case against Frank." Thus, Con-
ley was ready when the police, after determining that he could not only
write but had written the murder notes, accused him of involvement in little
Mary's demise. "He lay in his cell and conjured up the story he has told, and
it is monstrous." With that, the lawyer had introduced one of his central
premises. Where the state contended that the Negro's account was what
remained after the initial deceptions were stripped away, the defense— in
its lone nod to Jim's intelligence— argued that it was the self-serving work
of a splendid imagination.

VERDICT 319

In an effort to provide further proof of Conley's cunning, Arnold at this
point brandished copies of the Negro's various affidavits, marveling aloud
at the care with which he had "felt his way along," altering inconvenient
details at the suggestion of the detectives. Yet even so, the lawyer argued,
Conley's testimony contained a sufficient number of absurdities to render it
implausible. For one, there was his assertion that prior to the murder, he'd
often stood guard at the factory building's Forsyth Street entrance while
Frank consorted with women upstairs. "That's ridiculous," declared Arnold,
citing that during the period in question, the plant shared the door with
another tenant, the Clark Woodenware Company. "Frank wouldn't have
had any right to lock the place up and shut them out." Then there was his
claim that on the afternoon of the crime, despite having just heard little
Mary scream, he allowed Monteen Stover to ascend to the second floor
unchallenged. Staring directly at the jurors, the lawyer exclaimed, "Gentle-
men, it fatigues my indignation to suppose that such splendid citizens as
yourselves would believe a lie like that." Then there were his statements
regarding two other April 26 visitors, Emma Clark and Corinthia Hall.
"Bear in mind," urged Arnold, "that these women, in testimony corrobo-
rated by other witnesses, say they came to the factory 30 minutes before
Conley says they were there." And as for his allegation that Frank hid him
in a wardrobe to avoid being seen by the women, the lawyer noted, "Even if
Frank had killed the girl, he could have let Emma and Corinthia come in
and see Conley without arousing their suspicion. He was the superintend-
ent, and Conley worked there." Most preposterous of all was Jim's con-
tention that after he'd taken down the murder notes, Frank remarked,
"Why should I hang? I have wealthy people in Brooklyn." Glancing around
the room, Arnold asked, "Do you reckon a white man ever would have
made a statement like that? Do you reckon he would have broken down
and yelped like a dog?" At this, jurors and spectators alike chortled.

Having thus in two hours exposed more flaws in Conley's story than
Luther Rosser had in three days, Arnold accused the Negro of Mary Pha-
gan's murder:

Conley admits he was right there behind the elevator when that little
girl came into the factory. And he was right there when she came down. It
took but two steps to get her mesh bag. Probably his aim was robbery. Here
was a drunken, crazed negro, hard up for money. The little girl probably
held to it when he grabbed it. He struck her in the eye and she fell. It is but
the work of one moment, gentlemen, to push her into that elevator shaft.

Why go further than this black wretch there by the elevator shaft, fired
with liquor, fired with lust and crazy for money? Why, negroes rob and rav-

320 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

ish every day in the most peculiar and shocking way. But Frank's race don't
kill. They are not a violent race. Some of them may be immoral, but they go
no further than that.

With that, Arnold briefly returned to the defense table, retrieving a six-
foot-high chart that presented the defense's minute-by-minute account of the
whereabouts of Frank and other principals in the case on the day of the crime.

Though the chart's crisply lettered entries cataloged everything from
Minola McKnight's 7:30 a.m. arrival at the Franks' home to fix breakfast to
the 10:25 PM - departure of the family's poker party guests, Arnold was
interested only in details pertaining to the period between noon and three
in the afternoon. Which was why he began by pointing to the lines noting
that Monteen Stover reached the pencil factory at 12:05, followed by Mary
Phagan at 12:12. "No matter how much Mr. Dorsey tries to move up the
streetcar schedule," the lawyer said, these times had been verified by the
state's witnesses as well as the defense's, and they established that even if
Frank was not in his office when Stover appeared, this did not support the
claim that he was at that moment choking the life out of little Mary. She was
not yet on the premises. That said, Arnold ran his hand down the chart,
stopping at a notation reading "12:20— Lemmie Quinn."To the lawyer, this
was another critical moment, and he lingered on it:

The sworn evidence gives Frank only eight minutes between the time
Mary Phagan came to the factory and the time Quinn came. Could Frank
have attacked her in just eight minutes? And then been back at his desk, a
normal man digging into his work, in eight minutes?

Having thus exposed two vulnerabilities in the prosecution's murder-day
chronology, Arnold attempted to expose one more. According to his chart,
Frank left the plant for lunch at 1:00. Also according to the chart, Helen
Kerns saw Frank waiting for a trolley at Alabama and Whitehall streets at
1:10, while Mrs. Albert Levy saw him exit the same trolley at Georgia and
Washington avenues at 1:20. After reminding his audience that Conley tes-
tified the superintendent had not departed the factory until 1:30, the lawyer
asserted, "Gentlemen, these witnesses— one a pure, sweet little bud, the
other, it's true, a Jew, but she was telling the truth— make it as clear as holy
writ that Conley was lying, that he is a liar fit only for the lower regions."
That said, Arnold again pointed to his chart, focusing on an entry recording
Rebecca Carson's glimpse of Frank returning to town on a streetcar around
2:20. Methodically, he was endeavoring to illustrate that the state's version
of the superintendent's activities on the afternoon of April 26 was not cred-
ible. What, then, remained? Nothing, he insisted, but "the twin P's— preju-

VERDICT 321

dice and perjury." Speaking with the zeal of one whose purpose was to con-
duct an exorcism, the lawyer pivoted away from the chart and addressing
Dorsey directly roared:

Away with your miserable lies about perversion, away with your mangy
street gossip, away with your Jew-lynching witnesses, away with your third-
degree testimony, away with your trumped-up evidence. If you are fair, you
must stick to the facts.

With the clock now ticking down to 6:00 p.m. and evening encroaching,
Arnold strode to the jury-box rail and made his concluding entreaty:

Gentlemen, never has there been such malice displayed in the prosecu-
tion of any case. The crime was horrible. God grant its perpetrator may be
punished, and I think that we can prove that Jim Conley is the man who
should receive the punishment. Let us follow the law and not follow preju-
dice. Frank's alibi is complete, and Jim Conley has been proven a liar. The
whole case is a fabrication, a frame-up pure and simple.

Gentlemen, write a verdict of not guilty and your consciences will be
clear.

Noticeably lighter than at the trial's start, features drawn and eyes dull,
the Luther Rosser who rose Friday morning to speak the defense's last
words bore little resemblance to his familiar antagonistic self. In a worn
whisper that barely carried over the buzz of the electric fans, the exhausted
lawyer opened by echoing Arnold's plea to the jurors to insulate them-
selves from the "hostile and overzealous" spirit of Atlanta's streets.

Rosser then took aim at the prosecution's case, beginning with the char-
acter evidence. His first target was the allegation that the National Pencil
factory was a hotbed of immorality. Since the plant's founding in 1908, he
stated, it had employed countless souls, yet after weeks of "microscopic
examination" the police had been able to locate only a few who would
swear against it, foremost among them C Brutus Dalton. The very thought
of this witness angered the big man, and he hoarsely rasped:

Did you take a look at him when he went on the stand? God Almighty,
when he writes on a human's face, doesn't always write beautifully, but
he never fails to write legibly. If you were to meet Dalton in the dark,
wouldn't you instinctively put your hand on your pocketbook?

Dalton, Rosser added, was exactly the sort who would go "down that scut-
tle hole into the basement, into the inner sanctum of filth." Not that the

322 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

lawyer believed that Dalton or, for that matter, anyone else had actually
used the factory as a trysting place. For one thing, Rosser asserted point-
edly, had the plant been the site of such activities, Chief Beavers's "vice
squad" would have exposed that during its recent campaign against prosti-
tution. For another, had even a whiff of wrongdoing reached the ears of the
citizens whose children composed the bulk of the company's workforce,
they would have protested so vociferously that the business "would have
been wrecked on the rocks of bankruptcy."

Rosser next challenged Frank Hooper's contention that the upstanding
Atlantans who'd attested to Frank's rectitude were in no position to know
his true nature. Gesturing to the superintendent, the lawyer declared:

Maybe there are such things as Dr. Jekylls and Mr. Hydes. My friend
Hooper may know more about that than I do. But do you judge men by the
exceptions? No, you judge them by the majority rule. When the good and
decent men and women of his neighborhood come to the stand and say his
character is good, you believe them.

Finally, Rosser proclaimed that the many insinuations notwithstanding,
Dorsey had failed to prove any history of undue familiarity between Frank
and Mary Phagan. Regarding Ruth Robinson's claim that she'd heard the
superintendent call little Mary by name, the lawyer asserted that it meant
nothing. As to Willie Turner's profession that he'd observed the girl backing
away from Frank in fright, he sadly shook his head, remarking, "I'm sorry
for that boy. Think of the claws with which these detectives dragged his
statement out of him. Picture the way they treated Minola McKnight, then
think of him." Which left only Dewey Hewell's charge that on several occa-
sions, she'd seen the superintendent place his hands on Mary's shoulders. To
this, the lawyer ticked off the names of the witnesses— among them the
state's Grace Hicks— who had sworn that the superintendent had not been
acquainted with the victim.

With that, Rosser attacked the state's circumstantial evidence case,
beginning with the charge that Frank had lured Mary Phagan to his office
on Saturday, April 26. The facts, he contended, just didn't support such a
conclusion. "How did Frank know Mary wasn't going to come on Monday
or Tuesday?" demanded the lawyer. "And how did he know no one else
would be in his office when she got there? He's a smart man, but he's not a
seer."

The allegations of premeditation on Frank's part thereby covered,
Rosser assailed the charges of suspicious behavior in the murder's after-
math. Referring to the superintendent's failure to answer the telephone
when the police initially tried to notify him of the crime, he declared, "Gen-

VERDICT 323

tlemen, when Frank didn't hear the telephone ringing that morning, it was a
sign of peace of mind and good conscience." Regarding Frank's reaction to
the sight of Mary Phagan's body at the morgue, Rosser asked, "Is there any-
one within the sound of my voice who would not have been nervous if they
had seen that little girl cut off in the beginning of her young life lying there
disfigured— a beautiful flower smeared in the mud, crushed in the cinders?"
The lawyer was most forceful, however, on a matter of which he had first-
hand knowledge— his hiring by Frank the Monday following the murder.
"Let's examine what happened," he urged. "When they took him to the sta-
tion house, he was under arrest— John Black's testimony proved as much."
The superintendent, unaware of the police force's checkered past, "failed to
recognize his dilemma," yet others understood, and it was through their
efforts that Rosser was engaged. Facing the jurors, the lawyer asserted:

Sig Montag, who has been here a long time, knew this old police crowd.
He knew what danger there was to Frank. So he called up Herbert Haas.
Haas didn't want to go. His wife was expecting. That's why Haas called
[me]. And I went down there. They weren't happy to see me. But I had a
right to be there, and Frank had a right to have me there. Dorsey tells you
this is an indication of guilt on Frank's part. Gentlemen, when the solicitor
reaches the age in years that I have, he'll regret it.

Spent though he obviously was, as Friday's midday recess approached,
Rosser, cognizant that the defense's hour upon the stage was nearly done,
summoned the extra ration of strength necessary to launch a vigorous
assault on the remaining elements of the state's case. Pacing before the jury,
sweat pouring down his neck and into his shirt until the thin alpaca sport
jacket he'd chosen for this pivotal occasion stuck in patches to his shoulders,
he started by disputing Dorsey's claim that Frank had hired the Pinkerton
Detective Agency to shield himself. Not only was this not so, but in truth, by
engaging the outfit, the superintendent had brought the wolf to his door.
Declared the lawyer:

Gentlemen, take a look at this spectacle if you can.

Here is a Jewish boy from the North. He is unacquainted with the
South. He came here alone and without friends, and he stood alone. This
murder happened at his place of business. He told the Pinkertons to find
the man, trusting to them entirely, no matter where what they found might
strike. He is defenseless and helpless. He knows his innocence and is will-
ing to find the murderer.

Yet they try to place the murder on him. God, all merciful and all pow-
erful, look upon a scene like this.

324 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Rosser then took issue with Dorsey's charge that in an effort to implicate
Newt Lee as the killer, Frank had altered the night watchman's time slip
from the evening of the crime and had planted the bloody shirt at his home.
Regarding the time slip, the lawyer declared that the superintendent was
not the only factory official who'd initially stated Lee had punched it cor-
rectly; N. V. Darley had been likewise mistaken. As for the shirt, while he
didn't say so outright, Rosser intimated that it had been John Black— not
Frank— who'd soaked the garment in crimson and secreted it in the barrel
the night watchman used as a bureau. He'd done so, he implied, because he
was the one who'd hoped to pin the murder on Lee; failing that, he'd
decided to use the shirt against the superintendent. In the end, though,
Frank's lead counsel not surprisingly reserved his harshest salvos for the
state's star witness.

Despite its many parts, Rosser's concluding attack on Jim Conley, which
would carry over into the early afternoon, was meant to convey one tran-
scendent point. To wit: Everything about the Negro that had mesmerized
the jurors, whether it was his appearance or, most important, his testimony,
was a fabulous, self-protecting invention polished to a high gloss by Dorsey
and his minions. "Who is Conley?" Rosser asked by way of introducing
his thesis. "Who did he used to be? And was he like his old self when you
saw him?" After letting these questions hang briefly in the air, the lawyer
bluntly answered:

Conley is a plain, beastly, drunken, filthy, lying nigger with a spreading
nose through which probably tons of cocaine have been sniffed. But you
weren't allowed to see him as he is.

That said, Rosser turned a furious gaze upon the occupants of the prose-
cution's table. "Think of what they did," he began, whereupon without call-
ing William Smith by name, he enumerated the various personal services
Conley's lawyer had provided his client before the state placed him on the
stand. Proclaimed the big man:

They got a dirty, black negro and in order to give impetus to his testi-
mony they had a barber cut his hair and shave him, and they gave him a
bath. They took his rags from his back, and he came in here like a slicked
onion. They tried to make him look like a respectable negro.

Conley's account of the crime, argued Rosser, had been similarly buffed.
While he, like Arnold, believed that Jim's initial statement had been the
fruit of his own fertile mind ("Every Southern man knows that negroes can
make up gruesome stories"), he maintained that "the finest faculty in the

VERDICT 325

South" had assisted in the creation of what followed. Again indicating the
prosecution team, the lawyer proclaimed:

There's Professor Starnes, who holds the chair in theology. And Profes-
sor Black, he of the third degree. And there, in charge of them all, is Dean
Lanford. Dean, I greet you.

As Rosser, warming to his satire, enthusiastically told it, the detectives
charged with refining Conley's tale at first "put him in high school." There,
they worked out the worst rough spots. "Here's the way they would do it,"
he asserted. "Professor Scott would say, 'Now stand up, James and recite.
Why James, that couldn't be right. It couldn't have been done on Friday.'
'That's right, boss. It was Saturday.' 'That's better James. Now repeat.' And
so they went on." After several weeks of instruction, the lawyer added,
Conley graduated to the university, where he met "Professor Dorsey" and
took courses in such subjects as sexual perversion. It was thanks to the
advanced tutoring that the account Jim ultimately gave on the stand con-
tained so many new details.

What the jury made of Rosser's spirited tribute to Conley's station house
alma mater cannot be known, but amused or not, the lampoon raised
a troubling question: If Jim's testimony was so obviously a fabrication,
why hadn't Frank's lead counsel exposed it as such during his cross-
examination? Facing the men who constituted his only real audience, the
lawyer confronted the matter head-on:

My friend Hooper said that I didn't break the negro down. And its true,
he stuck to his story word for word— like an actor. You know, you can take
an actor and let him memorize his lines, and if you wake him in the middle
of the night, he can pick right up in his speech. But if you ask him about
something else, he's lost. That's the way it was with Conley. Every time he
got away from the main story, he either admitted that he had lied or he
said, "I disremember." Gentlemen, there is no better sign that a man has
memorized his story and that he is lying than those words. You can look
through the record of his testimony and find page after page where he said,
"I disremember." In the law books, those words stand as the badge and
sign of perjury, and they brand Conley as what he is— a trained parrot.

With that, Rosser was essentially finished. He spoke a few disparaging
words about the state's medical evidence; he reiterated some inconsisten-
cies in Dorsey's murder-day time line. But in the end, as one of his final
comments to the jury made plain, he framed the decision as a racial one.
Declared the lawyer:

326 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

If you, as white men, should believe Jim Conley, it will be a shame on
this great city and on this great state and will be until the end of time.

Whether Hugh Dorsey's decision to begin his closing argument by por-
traying the state as the victim of a brutalizing defense team resulted from
genuinely bruised feelings or shrewd calculation, he could not have chosen
a better gambit. No sooner had Rosser returned to his seat than the solici-
tor asserted that he and Frank Hooper had not only been outnumbered by
Frank's counsel but that they had been maligned and mistreated by them as
well. Speaking from behind the prosecution table, he declared:

The gentlemen have abused me. They have abused the detectives. They
have heaped calumny on us to such an extent that that good lady, the
mother of this defendant, was so wrought up that she arose and in this
presence denounced me as a dog.

And so there it was: the embattled state's attorney versus the blue-
stockinged barristers. The humble people of Atlanta versus the wealthy
outsiders.

The gauntlet thus thrown down, Dorsey promptly countered the de-
fense's eleventh-hour allegation that the prosecution had been motivated
by discriminatory leanings. " 'Prejudice and perjury,' says Mr. Arnold,"
remarked the solicitor, repeating his counterpart's charge. Then, looking up
at the jurors, he incredulously inquired:

Gentlemen, do you think that I, or that these detectives, are actuated by
prejudice? Would we as sworn officers of the law have sought to hang Leo
Frank on account of his race and religion and passed up Jim Conley, a
negro? Prejudice?

These questions all but obliterated the defense's accusation. And if they did
not, there was something else. According to the solicitor's narrow but indis-
putably accurate reading of the record, it was Frank's lawyers who injected
the issue of religious bias into the proceedings. "Not a word emanated from
this side," he asserted. "We didn't feel it. We would despise ourselves if we
had. But ah, I have never seen any two men manifest more delight or exal-
tation than Messrs. Rosser and Arnold when they seized upon George
Kendley," the witness who'd purportedly stated that the superintendent
should hang because of his Jewishness. Though he stopped short of saying
so, the solicitor couldn't have made his point clearer— the cry of anti-
Semitism was a desperate ploy to salvage a losing case.

VERDICT 327

With that, Dorsey paid homage to a pantheon of Jewish statesmen and
business leaders. "I honor the race that has produced a Disraeli, the greatest
Prime Minister that England has ever produced," he began, then doffed his
hat to Confederate secretary of state Judah P. Benjamin and a number of
local sons of David, among them the lawyer Henry Alexander, his University
of Georgia roommate. Yet lest anyone think he was endorsing the defense's
claim that Jews did not commit violent crimes, the solicitor then introduced
a rogue's gallery of Hebrew malefactors— Abe Hummel, Herman Rosen-
thal, Abe Reuf— all culled from recent front pages. "This great people," he
insisted, "rise to heights sublime, but they sink to the depths of degredation,
too, and they are amenable to the same laws as you or I and the black race."

Dorsey then addressed what he contended was the only material that
should have any relevance— the evidence proving that Frank had mur-
dered Mary Phagan. And he started with what he termed "this character
proposition." First, he reiterated his co-counsel's claim that the Atlanta
Jews who'd attested to the superintendent's outstanding moral fiber had
never seen his dark side. "Dr. Marx, Dr. Sonn, all these other people who, as
Mr. Hooper said, run with the Dr. Jekyll of the Hebrew Orphans' Home,
don't know the Mr. Hyde of the factory." That said, he vouched for the cred-
ibility of the former employees who'd testified to Frank's lasciviousness,
declaring that Rosser and Arnold's dismissal of them as liars was, in fact,
evidence of their truthfulness, then averring that even if he and the detec-
tives were as corrupt as the defense maintained, they could not have com-
pelled the girls to swear falsely. "Do you think that we could go and get
nineteen or twenty of them and through prejudice or passion get them to
come up here and say that the man's character is bad and it not be the
truth?" In the end, however, the solicitor directed his sharpest comments at
his opposing numbers for their failure to cross-examine these young
women. After lifting a thick legal tome from the table in front of him, he
looked up at his audience, then demanded:

Now gentlemen, put yourself in Frank's place. If you are a man of good
character, and twenty people come in here and state that you are of bad
character, is it possible, I'll ask you in the name of common sense, that
you would permit your counsel to sit mute? You wouldn't do it, would
you? If a man says that I am a person of bad character and it's a lie, I want
to nail the lie, to show that he knows nothing about it. This book says it's
allowable to cross-examine a witness, to see and find out what he knows,
who told him these things. Yet these able counsel did not do so, and I'm
here to tell you that this thing of itself is pregnant, pregnant, pregnant
with significance.

328 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Predictably, there was much more that Dorsey wanted to say regarding
the issue of Frank's character, but with late afternoon now approaching, he
had time to address just one last point— the superintendent's alleged pen-
chant for bursting in unannounced on unclothed female employees. Resort-
ing, as was his style, to yet another rhetorical question, he turned to Frank,
then back to the jury, and inquired:

What business did this man have going into those dressing rooms? You
tell me that to go up there, shove open the door and walk in was part of his
duty when he had foreladies to do it? You tell me he did this to stop the
girls from flirting?

After citing the many witnesses— among them the defense's own Irene
Jackson— who'd attested to the superintendent's intrusions, the solicitor
gathered his notes and Judge Roan brought down the gavel.

Not that the day's events were over. Rather than disperse as they'd done
following previous sessions, the trial's 250 spectators, at the request of
William Smith, lingered on the sidewalks in front of the courthouse. Sup-
per, shows, dates— all could wait. And did, until 6 p.m., when Hugh Dorsey
appeared on the steps. At which point, the multitude— on Smith's cue—
burst into applause.

In anticipation of Saturday's court session, a crowd began forming in front of
the old city hall at 5:45, and by 9:00, when the doors swung open, it numbered
more than 1,000. Within minutes, the allotted seats were taken. Though one
reporter maintained that "absolute decorum" prevailed, another sensed an
"unspoken fear of trouble" in the air. Either way, observers concurred that
the attendees were almost to a soul sympathetic to the state. They had come
to hear the case for conviction put over.

Picking up where he'd left off Friday, Hugh Dorsey rounded out his
remarks on the character issue by declaring that even if Leo Frank had
been a pillar of rectitude prior to Mary Phagan's murder, it "would amount
to nothing." The solicitor then cited a number of mostly Jewish personages
who despite high status had committed terrible misdeeds. Think of the Old
Testament's David, he urged, "a great character until he put Uriah in the
forefront of battle in order that Uriah might be killed and David take his
wife." Or consider Judas Iscariot, "a good character and one of the Twelve,"
until he "took the thirty pieces of silver and betrayed our Lord, Jesus
Christ." And don't forget Benedict Arnold, a hero of the Revolution who
deceived the nation and whose name became "a synonym for infamy." That
Dorsey, his protestations of the day before notwithstanding, was attempting

VERDICT 329

to stir anti-Semitic sentiments there can be no doubt. And these weren't the
only juices he hoped to stimulate. Looking over at Frank, he mentioned an
altogether different sort of fallen angel:

Oscar Wilde was an Irish knight, a literary man, brilliant, the author of
works that will go down through the ages. But the Marquis of Queensberry
discovered there was something wrong between Oscar and his son. Oscar
Wilde was convicted, and in his old age went tottering to the grave, a con-
fessed pervert.

Having thus thrown several questionable punches, Dorsey moved on to
the topic of Frank's alibi. Approaching the chart the defense had used to
illustrate its version of how April 26 unfolded, he pointed to the entry stat-
ing that the superintendent had left the factory for lunch at 1:00 p.m. Then,
after instructing a bailiff to turn the display toward the wall, the solicitor
read a copy of the statement Frank had made for Newport Lanford on the
Monday following the crime in which he asserted that he had left the fac-
tory at 1:10. Considering the significance Arnold had attached to the earlier
departure time, the ten-minute discrepancy was extremely damaging, and
Dorsey knew it, exclaiming:

Up goes your alibi, punctured by your own statement when you didn't
know the importance of the time element in the case.

Not only did Frank's initial telling contradict his lawyer's, it also contra-
dicted that of his principal corroborating witness, Helen Kerns, who'd testi-
fied that she'd seen the superintendent standing at Alabama and Broad
streets at 1:10 that April Saturday. Moreover, as Dorsey revealed, the Kerns
girl's father worked for the Montag Paper Company, and though he didn't
say so outright, he implied that Sig Montag had coerced little Helen into
swearing falsely.

With that, Dorsey asked the bailiff to turn the defense's chart back
around, enabling him to discuss another entry, the one indicating Lemmie
Quinn's appearance in the factory office at 12:20 on April 26. "This is a
fraud," he boomed, reminding the jurors that at first, "Frank had a mighty
hard time remembering Quinn was there," not mentioning the fact until
after he'd conferred with counsel. The reason for the superintendent's reti-
cence, he added, could be found in Conley's testimony that Quinn had
come and gone before Mary Phagan arrived, making his visit irrelevant.
Concluded the solicitor: Frank's lawyers had altered the true sequence of
events, and loyal Lemmie had acquiesced.

Having thereby blown two large holes in Frank's account of his murder-

330 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

day itinerary, Dorsey lambasted the defense for accusing the state of sub-
orning perjury. To the contrary, he proclaimed, it was Frank's witnesses
who'd lied on the stand, and Kerns and Quinn weren't the only ones. Take
the female worker who after vouching for the superintendent's good char-
acter had announced that she would stake her life on his innocence. Such a
profession practically guaranteed that the girl had dissembled, asserted the
solicitor, adding:

I know enough about human nature to know that this willingness to die,
this anxiety to put her neck in a noose that ought to go around Leo Frank
was born of something more than just platonic friendship. Whenever you
see a woman willing to lie down and die for a man not related to her, who
occupies the relation towards her of an employer, you may know that there
must be a passion beyond that which ought to obtain between a married
man and a single woman.

The morning now half gone, Dorsey walked to the edge of the jury box
and unleashed a new and entirely unexpected attack. His weapon— the let-
ter Frank had written to his uncle Moses on April 26, a document that had
gone into the record, over the state's objection, as proof that the superin-
tendent had spent the afternoon of the murder innocently.

"Listen to this," Dorsey began, then read the letter aloud, focusing ini-
tially on the line "It's too short a time since you left for anything startling to
have developed down here." After pausing to let the words sink in, the
solicitor looked up at the jurors and exclaimed:

Too short! Too short! Startling! Tell me honest men, fair men, coura-
geous men, true Georgians seeking to do your duty, that that phrase
penned by that man to his uncle on Saturday afternoon didn't come from
a conscience that was its own accuser. Too short a time— the line shows
that the dastardly deed was done in an incredibly short time. Nothing
startling— I tell you that letter shows on its face that something startling
had happened, and that there was something new in the factory.

Having exposed what he saw as an unconscious expression of guilt on
Frank's part, Dorsey honed in on the passage where the superintendent
described "the thin gray line of veterans" who'd braved Confederate Memo-
rial Day's chilly weather. Here, analysis gave way to vituperation:

I tell you that rich uncle didn't care a flip of his finger about the thin gray
line of veterans. All he cared about was how much money had been gotten
in by the pencil factory.

VERDICT 331

Though Moses Frank, a Confederate veteran himself, likely had relished
news of the Memorial Day observances, Dorsey was again trying to kindle
damaging associations. He was also laying the foundation for an outrageous
interpretive leap, one whereby the letter, whose recipient was at the time in
New York, would lend credence to Conley's claim that in the crime's after-
math, the superintendent had looked to the ceiling and exclaimed: "Why
should I hang? I have wealthy people in Brooklyn." Roared the solicitor:

Didn't have wealthy people in Brooklyn, eh? This uncle of his was
mighty near Brooklyn. His people lived in Brooklyn, and that's one thing
sure and certain, and old Jim never would have known it except Leo M.
Frank had told him, and they had $20,000 in cool cash out at interest.

Ugly as Dorsey's concluding insinuations had been, they did not signal a
full-blown descent into demagoguery. He now exhibited what appeared to
be genuine humility in the face of a grave responsibility, telling the jury, "I
have a difficult task, and I wish I didn't have to do it." Moreover, his treat-
ment of the next item on his agenda would be calm and based on a seem-
ingly superior understanding of the evidence.

Dorsey opened his discussion of the murder notes— a topic Frank's
lawyers had inexplicably given short shrift— by echoing Frank Hooper's
assertion that such communiques were simply not typical of Negroes. But
more than just dispel the theory that Conley had composed the notes, the
solicitor intended to prove that they were the original expressions of the
superintendent. He believed that they actually revealed Frank as their
author and hence the killer.

"This letter I hold in my hands," Dorsey began, referring to the note
scrawled on the yellow National Pencil Company order blank, "says, 'the
negro did it.' " After letting that simple phrase reverberate for a moment,
the solicitor grabbed several pages of trial transcript containing portions of
Conley's testimony, then declared: "Old Jim here, every time he opened his
mouth, says, T done it.' " As illustration, Dorsey then read a few examples:
" T locked the door like he done told me.' 'He done just like this.' T told Mr.
Frank the girl was done dead.' " The conclusion was clear— had Conley
composed the note in question, he would have written "the negro done it"
instead of the grammatically correct "the negro did it." As the solicitor
bluntly asserted: "It's the difference between ignorance and education."

Dorsey then moved on to the second murder note (the one jotted on a
piece of lined white paper), paying particular attention to the phrase: "that
negro did by his slef." Frank had inserted this line, the solicitor averred, to
ward off any suspicion that two men— he and Jim— had been involved in
the crime; Conley would not have needed to draw such a distinction. Flip-

33 2 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

ping back to the first note, Dorsey cited another phrase he regarded as a
dead giveaway. Looking at the superintendent, he said:

You make this poor girl say, "I went to make water." You tell me Conley
would have written that when there was no place for her there by the scut-
tle hole? Where did she go to make water? Right back there in the same
direction she would have gone to see about the metal.

Here, Dorsey sought to acquaint the jury with two related points. First,
he flatly announced that pads that contained company order blanks could
be found only where Conley swore the notes were written— the factory
office. Then he insisted that by not speaking up regarding the Negro's abil-
ity to write when detectives had initially shown him the notes, Frank had
been attempting to shield himself and his accomplice. These charges pro-
vided the solicitor with a perfect jumping-off place for his last words on the
topic:

I tell you, gentlemen, that a smarter man than Starnes, a smarter man
than Campbell, a smarter man than Black— in the person of Leo M.
Frank— felt compelled to write these letters, which he thought would
exculpate him, but which instead incriminate and damn him. This man
here, by these notes purporting to have been written by little Mary Phagan,
by the verbiage and the language and the context, in trying to fix the crime
on another, as sure as you are sitting in the jury box, has indelibly fastened
it on himself.

Dorsey next began hammering home one of his argument's central
themes, namely, that Frank's April 26 encounter with Mary Phagan was the
result of weeks, if not months, of plotting. Gesturing to the accused, the
solicitor asserted, "This man had been expecting for some time to cause this
little girl to yield to his blandishments and deflower her." As evidence,
Dorsey cited the testimony of "country boy" Willie Tiirner, who "as far back
as March" had witnessed Frank trying to "force his attentions" on Mary.
Then there was the testimony of Dewey Hewell, "from the Home of the
Good Shepherd," who'd seen the superintendent "place his hands" on the
poor thing's shoulders. And finally there was James M. Gantt, who swore
that the superintendent had asked about the girl and whose firing removed
an obstacle to the plan.

The opportunity Frank had long coveted, Dorsey insisted, at last pre-
sented itself on Friday, April 25, when Helen Ferguson asked for Mary Pha-
gan's pay envelope. The superintendent rejected the request knowing that
his action would result in the appearance of the object of his desire the next

VERDICT 333

day. It was at this point, the solicitor added, that Frank sought out Conley
and engaged him to perform the service he'd frequently performed in the
past.

"Ah, gentlemen, then Saturday comes, Saturday comes," Dorsey thrill-
ingly intoned. Following a sketch of Frank's alleged activities during the
morning hours, the solicitor asserted that Mary Phagan reached the factory
at 12:05 and that the superintendent escorted her to the rear of the second
floor "to see whether the metal had come." That said, Dorsey turned toward
the accused and with the full force of his being leveled his initial accusation:

You assaulted her, and she resisted. She wouldn't yield. You struck her
and you ravished her and she was unconscious.

At this, the victim's mother screamed, then buried her head in the arms of
little Mary's sister Ollie, who was today also seated at the prosecution table.
For the solicitor, there could have been no better backdrop, and he vigor-
ously pressed ahead, demanding of Frank's lawyers:

You tell me she wasn't ravished? I ask you to look at the blood— you
tell me that little child wasn't ravished? I ask you to look at the drawers,
that were torn. I ask you to look at the blood on the drawers. I ask you to
look at the thing that held up the stockings. Oh, no, there was no spermata-
zoan and there was no semen, that's true. But as sure as you are born, that
man is not like other men. He saw this girl. He coveted her. Others without
her stamina and her character had yielded to his lust. But she denied him,
and when she did, not being like other men, he struck her. He gagged her.

By now Rae and Lucille Frank were also sobbing, but Dorsey did not halt,
turning back to the superintendent and leveling his ultimate accusation:

You gagged her, and then quickly you tipped up to the front, where you
knew there was a cord, and you got the cord and in order to save your rep-
utation which you had among the members of the B'nai Brith, in order to
save, not your character because you never had it, but in order to save the
reputation with the Haases and the Montags and the members of Dr.
Marx's church and your kinfolks in Brooklyn, rich and poor, and in Athens,
then it was that you got the cord and fixed the little girl whom you'd
assaulted, who wouldn't yield to your proposals, to save your reputation,
because dead people tell no tales.

Having thus not only charged Frank with Mary Phagan's murder but found
a new way to make his Jewishness appear to be a factor, Dorsey capped this

334 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

portion of his address with a last thunderbolt. In a line that managed to
serve as an apologia for one of his least savory witnesses and invoke the
specter of extralegal violence, he asserted that in killing little Mary, the
superintendent was motivated by a final consideration— the knowledge
that had he let her live, "ten thousand men like Kendley would have sprung
up in this town and would have stormed the jail." Such things "oughtn't to
be," said the solicitor, but his qualification did not negate the remark.

As he'd done before, Dorsey now throttled back, quietly attending to
some outstanding business. First, he contested the defense's claim that the
blood and hair located on the factory's second floor the Monday after the
murder had been planted. Not so, he asserted, reminding his audience that
at the time R. P. Barrett made the finds, no reward had been posted. Next,
he reiterated the contention that the only dubious items entered into evi-
dence had been planted by the defense, ticking off a list that started with
the crimson-soaked shirt planted at Newt Lee's house and included the
twine and club located in the factory lobby in mid-May when Rosser "real-
ized something had to be forthcoming to bolster up the charge that Conley
did it."

And so it would continue until 1:30, when Dorsey— to the surprise of a
gallery that fully expected him to finish his presentation by day's end—
pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped the sweat from his face and
simply stopped. "I am mighty tired, your honor," he said by way of explana-
tion. "I hardly feel that I can go on."

At that, Reuben Arnold rose and joined Dorsey at the bench, where fol-
lowing a ten-minute conference, Judge Roan turned to the jurors and
announced: "Gentlemen, the solicitor has more to say but cannot go further
as he's exhausted. As much as I hate to do it, I think I have to adjourn until
9:00 Monday."

The next morning, Atlanta's papers repeated the court's rationale for
extending the trial another week. "Only the limitations of human endur-
ance, taxed to its utmost, kept the Frank case from going to the jury Satur-
day afternoon," declared the Constitution. But in fact, the truth was more
complicated, reflecting an awareness by all involved of the increasingly
volatile atmosphere in the city. As the Augusta Chronicle, one of the many
out-of-town sheets that had staffed the proceedings as the denouement
approached, reported:

The real reason the trial of Leo Frank was abruptly adjourned Saturday
was a fear of the same element which brought about the great Atlanta riot
[of 1906] —the lower element, the people of the back streets and the alleys,
the near-beer saloons and the pool rooms. The Saturday night crowd in

VERDICT 335

Atlanta, beer drinking, blind-tiger frequenting, is not an assemblage loving
law and order. A verdict that displeased these sansculottes of Marietta
Street might well result in trouble.

According to the Chronicle, Judge Roan and the lawyers from both sides, in
consultation with Governor John Slaton (who was said to have placed the
state militia on call), had agreed not to let the case go to the jury over the
weekend.

Thus Sunday passed with Atlanta in limbo, and nowhere was the sus-
pense felt more intensely than in Leo Frank's cell at the Tower. Throughout
the day, friends poured in, and to all the prisoner expressed confidence
regarding the outcome. To himself, however, Frank couldn't have been sure.
The state's evidence was persuasive, and Dorsey's speech had impressed
even his detractors. With uncharacteristic admiration, the Georgian termed
it "a white hot philippic, the greatest ever heard in a criminal court in the
South."

That a vocal majority of Atlantans was openly pulling for Leo Frank's con-
viction could not have been plainer. The enormous crowd gathered in front
of the old city hall Monday morning applauded Hugh Dorsey as he entered
the building. Anxious to make certain that this critical last session was not
itself marred by such demonstrations, Judge Roan wasted no time warning
the men and women lucky enough to gain admission to be careful, lest their
behavior "invalidate all the work that has been done in the past four
weeks." With that, a hush fell over the gallery, and the solicitor rose to his
feet.

Dorsey began his concluding push by offering a discourse on circum-
stantial evidence. Though he conceded that "this circumstance or that cir-
cumstance" might not be strong enough to convict Frank, he insisted that
when taken together, the pieces that had been placed before the jury con-
stituted "such a cable and such a strand that it was not only impossible to
conceive of a reasonable doubt but of any doubt at all." The solicitor then
reiterated the most damning particulars.

There was Lucille's failure to visit Leo during his first days of incar-
ceration. Though Reuben Arnold objected to Dorsey's "unfair and outra-
geous" attempt to imply that the superintendent's wife had stayed away
because she questioned her husband's innocence, Roan— after reminding
the defense lawyer that Frank had himself mentioned the matter in his
statement— ruled that the subject was fair game. Thus the solicitor said: "I
tell you, gentlemen, that there never lived a woman, conscious of the recti-

336 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

tude of her husband, who wouldn't have gone to him through snapshooters,
reporters and everything else. And you know it."

There was Frank's refusal to meet with Conley in late May when Chiefs
Beavers and Lanford brought the Negro to his cell. Proclaimed Dorsey:

Gentlemen of the jury— and if you have got enough sense to get out of
a shower of rain you know it's true— never in the history of the Anglo-
Saxon race, never in the history of the African race in America, did an
ignorant, filthy negro accuse a white man of a crime and that man decline
to face him.

Then there was the jailhouse get-together that did take place— the one
between Frank and Newt Lee. Dorsey simply did not buy the superinten-
dent's account of the session, and turning to him, he inquired:

Did you make an earnest, honest conscientious effort, as an innocent
employer would have with his employee, to get at the truth? No. According
to Lee, you hung your head and quizzed him not, but predicted that both
Lee and you would go to hell if Lee continued to tell the story, which he
tells even to this day.

Having raised several of the circumstances that in the wake of Frank's
arrest had whetted investigators' suspicions, Dorsey next focused on what
he regarded as a group of earlier incriminating actions. Many of these— the
superintendent's abrupt shift of Lee's April 26 starting time from four to six
p.m, his refusal to let the night watchman spend the intervening hours in the
factory, his attempt later that afternoon to keep James M. Gantt from enter-
ing the building to search for his shoes, his seven p.m. phone call from home
to check on Lee— were familiar. Others, however, had not been previously
adduced. For instance, Dorsey read much into the fact that Lucille rather
than Leo answered the door when the police came to their house following
the discovery of Mary Phagan's body, seeing it as a sign of Frank's evasive-
ness. Similarly, he felt that the superintendent's insistence on having N. V.
Darley on hand for the subsequent tour of the plant indicated that he'd
needed someone "to sustain his nerves." Finally, there was Frank's late-
Sunday visit to the morgue; in the solicitor's view, it sprang from an atavis-
tic impulse. "Like a dog to his vomit, a sow to his wallow, Frank went to view
the remains of this poor innocent little girl."

At midmorning, Dorsey changed course. His remarks on the medical evi-
dence were brief but pointed. First, he praised the humble Southern food
that had served as the source of the state's findings as to the hour of Mary
Phagan's demise:

VERDICT 337

I tell you, gentlemen, that there is no better, no more wholesome meal
than cabbage, and when the stomach is normal and all right, there is noth-
ing that is more easily digested. And I tell you that cabbage, cornbread, and
buttermilk is good enough for any man.

Then he saluted Dr. Roy Harris on the same grounds, terming him "a Geor-
gia son who holds the highest honor that can be given to a man in his pro-
fession in the state." That said, Dorsey blasted the defense's outside experts,
dismissing Dr. Leroy Childs as "the man from Michigan" and Dr. George
Bachman as "the man from Alsace-Lorraine." All of it was prefatory to the
main point:

This cabbage proposition fastens and fixes and nails down with the
accuracy which only a scientific fact can do, that Mary Phagan met her
death between the time she entered the office of the superintendent and
the time Mrs. White came up the stairs at 12:35 to see her husband.

By this juncture, Dorsey had been speaking for the better part of three
days. He had attacked the conduct of Frank's lawyers even as he had de-
fended his own. He had revisited familiar pieces of evidence, interpreted
enigmatic clues and illuminated previously ignored ones. He had both de-
nounced Frank's character and emphasized his Jewishness and wealth.
Through it all, however, he had barely mentioned the figure around whom
everything revolved and about whom his audience longed to hear more.
Which was why when he brought up his star witness, he did so in the confi-
dent tone of a general who'd held his crack troops in reserve until the end:

So far, not a word about Conley. Not a word. Leave Conley out, you've
got a course of conduct that shows that Frank is guilty. Now, let's discuss
Conley.

Yet rather than plunge into Conley's story, Dorsey began by praising the
white man who'd corroborated its most salacious elements. C. Brutus Dal-
ton, asserted the solicitor, enjoyed "the confidence of the people among
whom he lives," and his testimony as to the chores the Negro had previously
performed for Frank was absolutely credible.

Next, Dorsey rebutted Luther Rosser's claim that William Smith had
gotten Conley shaved and showered and outfitted in a new wardrobe in a
cynical attempt to keep the jurors from seeing him as the disreputable
Negro he truly was. Not so, maintained the solicitor. Smith had been moti-
vated by no other force than "the charity in his heart," and for this he
deserved "not condemnation but thanks."

338 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Dorsey appeared ready to launch his peroration, but once more he
digressed, offering a rationale for Conley's transfer from the laxly guarded
Tower to the police lockup. Though the topic was germane, the solicitor was
obviously stalling.

From this point on, however, there would be no more pauses. As the
clock ticked toward noon, Dorsey elucidated the evidence and testimony
that as he phrased it again and again sustained Jim Conley:

The defense's failure to cross-examine our character witnesses sustains
Jim Conley.

Frank's relations with Miss Rebecca Carson, who is shown to have gone
in the ladies' dressing room with him, sustains Jim Conley.

Your own witness, Miss Jackson, who says that this libertine and rake
came in when these girls were in there reclining and lounging after they
had finished their work and tells of the sardonic grin that lit his counte-
nance, sustains Jim Conley.

Monteen Stover, as to the easy-walking shoes she wore when she went
up into Frank's room, sustains Jim Conley.

Monteen Stover, when she tells you that she found nobody in that
office, sustains Jim Conley.

The testimony of Boots Rogers, that the elevator box was unlocked, sus-
tains Jim Conley.

His litany completed, Dorsey turned to the jury and in the voice of a man
who'd long been awaiting this moment vowed:

Gentlemen, every act of that defendant proclaims him guilty. Gentle-
men, every word of that defendant proclaims him responsible for the death
of this little factory girl. Gentlemen, every circumstance in this case proves
him guilty of this crime. Extraordinary? Yes, but nevertheless true, just as
true as Mary Phagan is dead. She died a noble death, not a blot on her
name. She died because she wouldn't yield her virtue to the demands of
her superintendent.

Your honor, I have done my duty. And I predict, may it please your
honor, that under the law that you give in charge and under the honest
opinion of the jury of the evidence produced, there can be but one verdict,
and that is: We the jury find the defendant, Leo M. Frank, guilty!

Whereupon the bells of the nearby Church of the Immaculate Conception
began to toll twelve, giving the solicitor— whose earlier diversions now
made sense— the opportunity to repeat his last word between each sue-

VERDICT 339

ceeding chime: "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!" Until finally the bells sounded
no more.

No sooner had Dorsey returned to his seat than Reuben Arnold, after
requesting that the jury be sent out, asked for a mistrial. The motion, which
the lawyer had written hastily in pencil and which he now read aloud, was
predicated on the many partisan outbursts that had occurred during the
course of the proceedings. Starting with a mention of the applause that had
greeted Judge Roan's decision of two weeks earlier to allow into evidence
Conley's testimony accusing Frank of sexual perversion and ending with a
reminder that this very morning the solicitor's arrival had been greeted
with cheers, Arnold cited five incidents that he believed had "tended to
coerce and intimidate" the jurors, who when they were not in court, he
stressed, sat in a room just twenty feet away. "Your honor," declared the
lawyer, "the behavior of the spectators throughout this trial has been dis-
graceful."

Predictably, Dorsey not only opposed Arnold's motion but disputed the
facts upon which it was based, asserting that even if there had been displays
of emotion, "it is ridiculous to say that they amounted to anything."

At this, Arnold, after recalling to the judge that he had himself witnessed
the gallery's conduct, asked him to "take cognizance of these facts and cer-
tify to them."

"Of course I heard the cheers," replied Roan, "but whether the jury was
influenced, I don't know."

Arnold sought permission to summon several of the deputy sheriffs
who'd supervised the jurors over the past month, and presently R. V.
DeVere and Charles Huber took the stand. The deputies' testimony, how-
ever, was inconclusive. Though DeVere stated that the jurors had heard the
applause, he maintained that they did not know which side it favored. As
for Huber, he said that he had not learned of Friday evening's demonstra-
tion until Saturday, a claim that even as it undermined the defense's point
drew snickers from the audience that seemed to affirm it. "Why, your
honor," Arnold complained. "You can't keep them quiet now."

In the end, however, Roan overruled the defense's motion, and the jury
was returned. The judge's charge was in most ways pro forma. He reminded
the twelve men that the law accorded Frank the presumption of innocence.
He defined the concept of reasonable doubt. He spoke of the differences
between direct and circumstantial evidence. Then he discussed character
evidence, informing the jurors that good character was no bar to conviction
but emphasizing that "an instance of misconduct shown by the state doesn't

340 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

mean the defendant is guilty." As to Frank's statement, the judge reminded
his audience that the superintendent had not been under oath when he
made it. "It is with you as to how much of it you will believe or how little."
This said, Roan told the jurors that if they found against Frank, they would
have the option of recommending mercy. If they did not so recommend, he
added, the court would have no choice but "to sentence the defendant to
the extreme penalty." With that, the judge brought down his gavel, where-
upon Lucille Frank leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes and clasped
her throat as if about to faint. As for her husband, he appeared, as always,
unaffected.

The jury began its deliberations at 1:35 p.m. in a chamber two floors above
the courtroom. After a month in the fishbowl, the space was relatively iso-
lated, although even here, the men were not free from scrutiny. As it so hap-
pened, the sixth story of the nearly completed courthouse offered a perfect
vantage on the scene, and a gaggle of reporters had congregated there. Not
that they could ascertain much from such a remove. True, they observed
that the jurors' first act was to elect Fred Winburn, the railroad freight
agent, foreman. And yes, they noticed that early on, the men passed around
the bottles containing cabbage samples. But otherwise, they could do little
but speculate as to various dispositions.

As the jury got down to work, considerable and significant activity was
simultaneously under way in the Thrower Building office of Leonard Roan.
There, at the judge's suggestion, representatives of the defense and the
state were completing an agreement whereby the presence in the court-
room of both Frank and his lead lawyers would be waived for the reading of
the verdict. Roan, conscious of the increasing hostility in Atlanta, believed
that in the event of an acquittal, the superintendent and his counsel could
well become the targets of violence.

Shortly after this arrangement was finalized— and just an hour and forty-
five minutes after the jurors took up the case— the reporters looking on
from across the street flashed the news. The panel, following only two bal-
lots, had reached a verdict. Since it would take time for some of the princi-
pals to get back downtown, the jury remained out until 4:56 p.m. By then, a
crowd of five thousand was packed around the court building. Though
mounted policemen rode through the throng, there was no containing the
restive and anticipatory air.

For all the commotion outside, the courtroom itself was silent. The space
had been cleared of spectators. Thus only Dorsey and Frank Hooper at one
table, Rosser's son, Luther Jr. and his partner, Stiles Hopkins, at the other, a
few curious lawyers and a delegation of newsmen heard the key exchange.

VERDICT 341

"Gentlemen, have you reached a verdict?" asked the judge.

"We have, your honor," replied Winburn, at which point the foreman
unfolded a sheet of paper and in a trembling voice declared: "We have
found the defendant guilty."

No sooner had Winburn spoken than the reporters rushed en masse to
an adjacent room and over multiple lines installed for just this purpose
began phoning their offices. As they barked into mouthpieces, crowd mem-
bers clustered at the windows picked up the news and in seconds, observed
one journalist, "the cry of guilty took winged flight from lip to lip. It trav-
eled like the rattle of musketry. Then came a combined shout that rose to
the sky. Hats went into the air. Women wept and shouted by turns."

The demonstration shook the courtroom— so much so that an over-
whelmed Dorsey ceded the task of polling the jury to Roan. "Is that your ver-
dict?" the judge twelve times asked over the noise, and twelve times the reply
came back, "Yes." There was no recommendation of mercy, though Roan,
mindful of what was occurring outside, announced that he would delay sen-
tencing. Thus it was done, and as John W. Coleman, little Mary's stepfather,
shook hands with the jurors, the solicitor made his way toward the door.

Standing on the old city hall steps, Dorsey blinked with astonishment.
For blocks in every direction, the streets pulsated with cheering souls, while
overhead, windows were crowded with women and children. Reported the
Constitution:

The solicitor reached no farther than the sidewalk. While mounted men
rode like Cossacks through the human swarm, three muscular men slung
Mr. Dorsey on their shoulders and passed him over the heads of the crowd
across the street.

With hat raised and tears coursing down his cheeks, the victor in Geor-
gia's most noted criminal battle was tumbled over a shrieking throng that
wildly proclaimed its admiration. Few will live to see another such demon-
stration.

After being deposited at his office, Dorsey grabbed a fistful of belongings,
then made his way to a waiting car. To shouted requests from reporters for
comment, he would say only, "I feel sorry for his wife and mother." With
that, the machine pulled slowly away, the solicitor shaking hands with well-
wishers as policemen held open a path. Up Pryor Street into the central
business district the vehicle crept, thousands still screaming their approba-
tion and from the skyscrapers ahead a bright fluttering of handkerchiefs.

Across town at the Fulton County Tower, the mood was, of course, dif-
ferent. In fact, the news so shocked a group of Leo Frank's friends— among
them Rabbi David Marx, a young lawyer named Samuel Boorstin and Dr.

34 2 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Benjamin Wildauer, a politically connected dentist— that they called Dr.
Howard Rosenberg, then waited in the lobby for the thirty minutes it took
the Franks' physician to arrive before mounting the metal steps to the
superintendent's cell. The entourage found Leo and Lucille sitting side by
side. After Frank rose to greet the men, it fell to Rosenberg to deliver the
grim tidings. To which Frank incredulously responded: "My God! Even the
jury was influenced by mob law." Lucille, however, could not mask her
heartbreak. Noted a reporter who took in the scene: "Mrs. Frank huddled
closer to her boyish-looking husband. There was a wild stare in her eyes.
She threw her arms about his neck and sobbed bitterly. He stroked her
head and pleaded with her to be brave." Following a brief interlude, Rosen-
berg prevailed upon Lucille to let him drive her home, where her parents
and Leo's mother were waiting. Though Lucille refused comment to the
newsmen who met her outside, Wildauer soon appeared and issued what
would be Frank's one official statement: "I am as innocent today as I was
one year ago." Soon thereafter, the Seligs' Negro chauffeur arrived with the
convicted man's supper, which he ate with relish. Then he retired.

Many Atlantans behaved as if they hoped the day would never end.
Long into the night, people stood on corners discussing the verdict. Others
called friends. (Southern Bell executives announced that the volume of
phone usage in the city Monday broke records.) And everyone, it seemed,
bought extras. All three papers published special editions, but predictably, it
was the Georgian that outdid itself, printing 131,208 copies, more than triple
its pre-Hearst circulation.

Tuesday dawned with Atlanta still besotted from Monday's events. Which
was why Judge Roan informed just a few people regarding the time and
place of Leo Frank's sentencing. As a consequence, when the superintend-
ent walked into a Thrower Building courtroom at 10:20, the only individu-
als present were Rosser and Arnold, assistant solicitor Ed Stephens and a
handful of reporters. So secretive were the proceedings that Lucille did not
learn of them in time to be at her husband's side, meaning that when the
judge asked Frank if he had anything to say before hearing his fate pro-
nounced, he could seek solace solely from within. Not that the convicted
man appeared at a loss. Looking Roan directly in the eyes, in a clear voice,
he declared: "I say now, as I have always said, that I am innocent. Further
than that, my case is in the hands of my lawyers."

With that, Roan remarked, "Mr. Frank, I have tried to see that you had a
fair trial for the offense for which you were indicted. I have the conscious-
ness of knowing that I have made every effort." Then, using words pre-
scribed by law, the judge proclaimed:

VERDICT 343

It is ordered and adjudged by the court that on the tenth day of Octo-
ber, 1913, the defendant, Leo M. Frank, shall be executed by the sheriff of
Fulton County. That said defendant on that day between 10 o'clock a.m.
and 2 o'clock p.m. shall be hanged by the neck until he shall be dead, and
may God have mercy on his soul.

In the wake of Frank's sentencing, Reuben Arnold submitted a motion
to Roan announcing the defense's intention to seek a new trial, and Octo-
ber 4 was set as the hearing date. Soon thereafter, Frank's lawyers distrib-
uted a statement indicating how vehemently they intended to pursue the
fight:

The trial which has just occurred and which has resulted in Mr. Frank's
conviction was a farce and not in any way a fair trial.

The temper of the public mind was such that it invaded the courtroom
and pervaded the streets and made itself manifest at every turn the jury
made and it was just as impossible for this jury to escape the effects of the
public feeling as if they had been turned loose and allowed to mingle with
the people.

It would have required a jury of stoics, a jury of Spartans, to have with-
stood this situation.

The defense's allegations would be difficult to prove. Even as Rosser and
Arnold were asserting that the men who tried Frank had been influenced
by public sentiment, the Georgian had an extra on the streets in which
an unnamed juror maintained: "The jury heard none of the cheering for
Dorsey outside the courtroom at any time. We heard the crowds in the
courtroom laugh at times, and we laughed, too, but that had no effect." To
the contrary, the anonymous panelist declared, the body based its decision
solely on the facts. "Don't think that we had not considered the case fully,"
he said. "And don't think that there was a man amongst us that wanted to
do what we did. Yet, day after day, the pressure grew heavier as the case was
put before us. From a slight dread it became an oppression, then a nausea
and at last a sickening sense that Frank was the guilty man and we were
going to give the world that verdict."

And so the most furiously fought legal battle in Georgia history had
ended where it began— in discord and dispute. There was, however, one
place in Atlanta where unanimity and harmony reigned. Boomed the Geor-
gian's headline:

JIM CONLEY,THE EBONY CHEVALIER OF CRIME,
IS DARKTOWN'S OWN HERO

344 AN D THE DEAD SHALL RISE

In the following text, the paper's James B. Nevin portrayed a Negro com-
munity in complete accord. After discussing the general reaction, the re-
porter gave the last word to a shoe-shine boy with "a smattering of
education and an ingratiating manner." Observed this representative black
man:

Well, boss, dem niggers down on Decatur Street, dey ain't talking of
nothing but Jim Conley. He's the most talked about nigger anywhere, I
guess. I hears him complimented on all sides. He done got de best of de
smartest of 'urn. Nobody can fool er nigger like Jim.

THIRTEEN

Appeals in and out of Court

o:

n or near Labor Day, 1913, barely a week after Leo Frank's con-
| viction, Rabbi David Marx walked into Atlanta's Terminal Station

and boarded a train for New York. At forty-one, balding and gray-
ing at the temples, the leader of the city's Reform congregation betrayed no
evidence of heartache or perturbation. Judging solely by appearances, he
was, as always, the cool and aristocratic diplomat who seemed at home in
every part of the capital of the New South. In truth, however, the rabbi was
distraught. He was also furious, believing that the jury's verdict against
Frank could be explained only by a sentiment that he'd heretofore main-
tained barely existed in Georgia: anti-Semitism.

Marx was not alone in such feelings. Secure and accepted as members of
Atlanta's German- Jewish elite had traditionally believed themselves to be,
in the days since the trial ended many of them had begun to manifest a deep
sense of unease. The initial public display of this unease occurred the night
of Frank's conviction when even as the bulk of the city's populace still cele-
brated, the rabbi's wife drove up to the Fulton County Tower to retrieve her
husband and in a tearful voice was heard to tell him: "Oh, please take me
away from Atlanta." In light of the fact that Eleanor Marx's father, Abra-
ham Rosenfield, was one of the Temple's cofounders, her remark suggested
a wound that went to the core of the Washington Street community. Two
mornings hence, the Macon Telegraph, indicating again that only the out-
of-town press was willing to call attention to the ill will the proceedings had
unleashed, confirmed as much, reporting:

The long case and its bitterness has hurt the city greatly in that it has
opened a seemingly impassable chasm between the people of the Jewish
race and the Gentiles. It has broken friendships of years, has divided the
races, brought about bitterness deeply regretted by all factions. The friends
who rallied to the defense of Leo Frank feel that racial prejudice has much
to do with the verdict. They are convinced that Frank was not prosecuted
but persecuted.

346 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Marx was headed to New York to alert the leaders of American Jewry to
Frank's plight, which he believed was commensurate to that of Alfred
Dreyfus, the French military officer who, after being convicted of treason in
1894, was shown to have been the victim of an anti-Semitic plot and, fol-
lowing worldwide agitation, pardoned. As the rabbi, in an August 30 letter
to a potential convert to the cause, had himself put it:

I would like to enlist your assistance in what is without doubt an Amer-
ican "Dreyfus" case that has just developed in Atlanta ... the evidence
against Frank is purely prejudice and perjury. The feeling against the
Damned Jew is so bitter that the jury was intimidated and feared for their
lives, which undoubtedly would have been in danger had any other verdict
been rendered.

Marx hoped to see a number of people in the city, but two stood out.

At fifty-five, Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of the New York Times, was not
only the most powerful figure in American journalism, he was the profes-
sion's most powerful Jew. (Moreover, he was a Southern Jew, reared in
Knoxville, Tennessee, who'd founded the Chattanooga Times, of which
he was still proprietor.) Yet even so, Ochs was loath to involve himself in
Jewish issues. "Mr. Ochs is a non- Jewish Jew," noted his trusted editorial
assistant Garet Garrett. "He will have nothing to do with any Jewish
movement." The most marked instance of this reluctance had occurred dur-
ing the Dreyfus affair, when the publisher resisted pleas to take the lead
in championing the French officer's exoneration. More recently, he had
rejected an invitation to join the American Jewish Committee, a group
composed of some of the country's most influential Jews. Though Ochs was
a sympathetic and, indeed, sentimental soul, his reasoning seemed inar-
guable. He was determined, in Garrett's words, never to let the Times
become "a Jewish newspaper." Securing his interest in the matter of Leo
Frank was hardly a fait accompli.

The other New Yorker at the top of Marx's list was Louis Marshall, pres-
ident of the American Jewish Committee. At fifty-six, Marshall was widely
regarded as attorney-at-large for the Jewish people. A partner in the firm of
Guggenheimer, Untermeyer and Marshall and an expert in constitutional
law, he had spent much of the past decade fighting anti-Semitism. In 1905,
he'd led a successful battle to open New York's restricted Lake Placid Club
to Jewish members. Soon thereafter, he'd conducted a victorious statewide
campaign to outlaw discriminatory practices at hotels. And in 191 1, he'd
spearheaded a triumphant nationwide drive to force the United States
to abrogate an international treaty that had been used by hostile Czarist

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 347

authorities to keep American Jews from freely conducting business in
Russia. What made this last accomplishment impressive was the fact that
after President William Howard Taft resisted an initially quiet lobbying
effort, Marshall, a Republican, enlisted the Democratic presidential aspi-
rant Woodrow Wilson in a public campaign to force the issue. When the per-
tinent bill came before Congress, it passed by a 300-to-i vote.

However, Marshall, too, was reluctant to involve himself or his organiza-
tion in most of the reported incidents of anti-Semitism that crossed his
desk. "We are always talking too much about Jews, Jews, Jews, and we are
making a Jewish question of almost everything that occurs," he was wont to
say. The thing to keep in mind, he often added, was "to avoid the appear-
ance of crying wolf." Thus when asked to initiate action against, say, a pro-
duction of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice on the grounds
that the character of Shylock was a prejudicial stereotype, he invariably
said no. Only truly just causes— ones rooted in incidents where Jews' rights
and freedoms as American citizens appeared to be threatened— received
Marshall's attention. He was also quite capable of shying away from any-
thing having to do with Leo Frank.

Since Ochs was at the time vacationing in Europe, Marx was shunted off
to one of the Times's assistant editors. After presenting an overview of the
Frank case to this underling, the rabbi asked that the paper— which had
printed only three brief pieces on the trial— look into the topic and prepare
a comprehensive article. The editor agreed to make some inquiries, but fol-
lowing a call to his Atlanta stringer, he went no further. As Garet Garrett
would write: "The correspondent . . . reported that there was a lot of anti-
Jewish feeling against Frank, and that the worst thing for him that could
happen would be for the Jews to rally to him, as Jews."

Marshall's response to Marx's appeal was more encouraging, although if
it was a call for action the rabbi wanted, he went away disappointed here as
well. The American Jewish Committee president believed that the Frank
case met his criteria for involvement, agreeing with Marx that the factory
superintendent had not received a fair trial and that anti-Semitism was a
factor. By September 5, in fact, Marshall was alerting his highly positioned
Jewish friends to what had happened in Atlanta. Frank's conviction, he
wrote fellow committee member Dr. Joseph L. Magnes, was a "horrible
judicial tragedy." To Irving Lehman, scion of the great merchant-banking
family and himself a respected lawyer, he asserted, "The case is almost a
second Dreyfus affair." Still, Marshall believed that an all-out campaign
would be precipitous and likely damaging to the condemned man's hopes.
On September 9, he informed Frank's friend Milton Klein, who had written
to second Marx's plea for support, that he preferred to work indirectly:

348 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

It would be unfortunate if anything were done . . . from the standpoint
of the Jews. Whatever is done must be done as a matter of justice, and any
action that is taken must emanate from non- Jewish sources.

Exhibiting a keen understanding of the resentment Southerners would
likely feel toward Northern intervention in general and Jewish intervention
in particular, Marshall proposed to work behind the scenes to change Atlan-
tans' thinking. As he wrote Lehman:

There is only one way of dealing with this matter and that is in a quiet,
unobtrusive manner to bring influence to bear on the Southern press [to
create] a wholesome public opinion which will free this unfortunate young
man from the terrible judgement which rests against him.

It appears to have been no coincidence that in response to these cool
reactions, either Marx or others in Leo Frank's camp chose this moment
to solicit the assistance of a more confrontational Northern Jew. Simon
Wolf, a prominent Washington lawyer who was both president of the capi-
tal's chapter of the B'Nai Brith and director of Atlanta's Hebrew Orphans
Home, was not a reticent soul. In mid-September he circulated a letter to
the members of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations counseling
action on Frank's behalf. By the month's end, Jewish publications from
Minnesota to Alabama had taken up the cause. Proclaimed the September
26 issue of Cincinnati's American Israelite:

Frank's religion precluded a fair trial . . . The man was convicted at the
dictates of a mob, the jury and the judge fearing for their lives.

This development infuriated Louis Marshall. Writing on September 27 to
Adolph Kraus, president of the national B'Nai Brith, the lawyer expressed
his "great regret [at] such articles as that which appeared on the editorial
page of the Israelite . . . They can do no good. They can only accentuate the
mischief." Making the same argument he'd made to Marx, Marshall added
that the best course was to lobby Southern newspapers to mount a home-
grown effort for Frank. That way, the anti-Semitism that had arisen in
Atlanta "may not only subside but may be absolutely counteracted and
destroyed."

As Rabbi Marx was making the rounds in New York, Leo Frank's lawyers
in Atlanta were gearing up for the next legal battle. The first order of busi-
ness was to prepare an amended motion for a new trial, and Luther Rosser

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 349

set to work. From Labor Day on, the Grant Building offices of Rosser,
Brandon, Slaton & Phillips were a hive of activity. Plainly, the condemned
man's counsel would argue that the many demonstrations in support of
Hugh Dorsey during the just completed proceedings had intimidated the
jurors. They would also contend that Judge Leonard Roan had erred in
allowing Jim Conley's sexually explicit testimony to remain in the record.
Yet beyond this, little was known. Rosser refused requests for interviews.
And Reuben Arnold, having left town for a long-planned vacation, was
unavailable for comment.

With months, possibly years, of wrangling ahead (the defense had already
announced that if the application for a new trial was denied, it would appeal
to the Georgia Supreme Court), Leo Frank now knew that the Fulton
County Tower would be his home for the foreseeable future. By early Sep-
tember, he had undertaken the task of redecorating his six-by-eight-foot
cell, seeing to it that the floors were polished, the walls scrubbed and two
chairs and a table installed. Boomed the Constitution's headline: cell now
like living room. Frank also established a physical-fitness regimen. Ris-
ing each morning at seven, he would go to a window and breathe deeply
while overlooking the sprawl of warehouses that surrounded the jail. Fol-
lowing twenty minutes of exercise with Indian clubs and a set of dumbbells
he'd received permission to keep on hand, he showered, donned a robe and
sat down to the newspapers. At 8:50, his father-in-law arrived with break-
fast, which usually consisted of cantaloupe, rolls and coffee. Presently, Her-
bert Schiff or Sig Montag dropped by to discuss business matters with
Frank, who while no longer in charge of day-to-day operations continued to
consult on major decisions. At 1:30, dinner was served, and at 4:00 Lucille
appeared, usually staying through supper. Most evenings, friends visited.
But on others, Frank sat up alone studying his case, preparing a file of the
evidence that he believed established his innocence. Despite his realization
that the process would be lengthy, he possessed every confidence that he
would not only win a new trial but that he would be exonerated. Noted the
Georgian: "There is no suggestion of the dejected or broken man con-
demned to be hanged."

The reason for Frank's optimism became apparent on October 1 when
his lawyers, just four days before the hearing date set by Judge Roan, re-
leased the amended motion. The document cited 115 reasons why the fac-
tory superintendent should be granted a new trial. As the defense saw it, the
court never should have admitted Bert Green's chart of the pencil plant,
with its colored lines indicating the paths the state maintained Frank had
traveled while committing the crime. Nor should it have countenanced Dr.
Henry F. Harris's "opinions" as to the hour of Mary Phagan's death. Then
there were the questionable allegations of lascivious conduct against the

35° AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

superintendent, not to mention numerous portions of Hugh Dorsey's ar-
gument (the references to Lucille's initial failure to visit her husband in
prison, for instance). Yet the elements of the motion that generated the
most attention had nothing to do with the legality of the evidence but
rather with the pretrial dispositions of the individuals who had rendered
the verdict. Roared the Journal's page-one headline:

JURORS JOHENNING AND HENSLEE BOTH ATTACKED

They Are Alleged to Have Gone on the Jury Prejudiced.

The motion's charges against shop foreman Marcellus Johenning and
buggy salesman Atticus Henslee were almost identically worded. Asserted
the first:

Johenning had a fixed opinion that the defendant was guilty prior to, and
at, the time he was taken on the jury and was not an impartial juror.

Echoed the other:

Henslee was prejudiced against the defendant when he was selected as a
juror, had previously thereto formed and expressed a decided opinion as
to the guilt of the defendant and in favor of the state.

To accuse two of the jurors of pretrial bias was a risky tack. In the weeks
since the proceedings concluded, Atlanta had elevated the men who con-
victed Frank to an exalted status. (On a mid-September Saturday, a forty-
car motorcade had transported the twelve to an outlying park where along
with Dorsey, Judge Roan and the reporters who'd covered the trial, they
were treated to a magnificent spread of fried channel catfish, barbecue and
Brunswick stew.) Yet the defense had not made the allegations lightly,
accompanying the amended motion with a sheaf of supporting affidavits.
Advancing the charge of prejudice against Johenning were a coworker
named H. C. Lovenhart and his wife and daughter. As the three recalled it,
they'd been discussing the Phagan murder with the shop foreman in May
when he'd said of Frank, "I know that he's guilty." Advancing the claim
against the better traveled Henslee were men from across the state. Accord-
ing to Samuel Aron of Atlanta, two days after the grand jury returned its
true bill against Frank, he'd overheard the buggy salesman exclaim to a
group at the downtown Elk's Club: "I am glad they indicted the God damn
Jew. They ought to take him out and lynch him, and if I get on that jury I'll
hang that Jew, sure." Farther afield, Mack Farkas, a livery stable owner in
the Southwest Georgia town of Albany who frequently did business with

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 351

Henslee, declared that during a meeting shortly before the proceedings
began, the buggy salesman had proclaimed, "I believe Frank is guilty."

No sooner had Hugh Dorsey looked over the amended motion and its sup-
porting affidavits than he sought a week's delay of the new trial hearing. To
this, Judge Roan readily assented. Following several days of work, Dorsey
announced that he'd barely gotten started and asked for another postpone-
ment. It, too, was granted, whereupon he packed his files into several valises
and along with his assistant, Ed Stephens, boarded a train for the south
Georgia town of Valdosta. There, some two hundred miles from the myriad
distractions of the city, the solicitor said he would be able to devote himself
fully to the task of drafting the arguments with which he hoped to refute the
defense's 115 grounds when court convened on the now scheduled date of
October 22.

While in Valdosta, Dorsey did more than just prepare for the upcoming
hearing. Realizing that he could not let the sensational charges against
Johenning and Henslee go unanswered, he spent much of his time on the
telephone orchestrating a campaign to present the two jurors as the men
most Atlantans believed them to be— fair and courageous citizens whose
only interest had been in seeing justice done. Not surprisingly, the first indi-
viduals to so declare were Johenning and Henslee themselves. Yet it wasn't
just the men under attack who spoke up. The jury foreman, Fred Winburn,
was equally vociferous, declaring, "The charges that the jury was prejudiced
are untrue. The jurors were all men of honor and integrity." Others among
the twelve also raised their voices, none more bluntly than pressman
Charles Bosshardt, who asserted: "I say the charges are bosh."

Dorsey's decision to enlist the jurors in defense of the trial's fairness was
shrewd. But if he expected Frank's lawyers to retreat, he was mistaken.
Three days after Winburn and Bosshardt vouched for Johenning and
Henslee, Reuben Arnold, back in town and fresh from his lengthy rest,
blasted the two, telling the Georgian:

Henslee 's prejudice and that of Johenning alone constitute a situation
that is sufficient to form a basis for a new trial. It is unthinkable that a man
should be sentenced to death when two of the men were violently biased
against him before a word of evidence was heard.

Arnold also revealed that he and Rosser had collected even more affidavits
bearing on the individual who was clearly their principal target— Henslee.

35 2 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Meantime, the defense chose this moment to call attention to a number
of other affidavits submitted with the amended motion. These documents
all had to do with the climate in which the trial had taken place, some focus-
ing on the already much discussed outbursts of cheering for Dorsey, the rest
addressing the heretofore unreported charge that members of the court-
house crowd had spoken with the jurors during breaks in the proceedings,
exposing them to influences that by law should have been outside their
purview.

Making the claim that the many displays of pro-prosecution sentiment
were witnessed by the jurors were thirteen men and women who said they'd
been in attendance at the proceedings or nearby during the incidents in
question. As John Shipp, Samuel Boorstin and the others told it, when
Dorsey received the thunderous ovation from the enormous crowd that
had been awaiting him at 6 p.m. on the trial's final Friday, the jurors were
only fifty feet away. Boorstin, who had, of course, been with Frank the after-
noon of his conviction, added that during the few minutes it took the
demonstration to subside, he'd followed the twelve back to their quarters at
the Kimball House, where he'd spotted juror F.V.L. Smith taking in the
spectacle from an upstairs room. In a similar vein, both Martha Kay and
Mrs. A. Shurman contended that from where they sat in the courtroom on
the proceedings' last day, they'd watched as the twelve, already in their box,
listened to the roar that met Dorsey's arrival.

Making the claim that on several occasions spectators had spoken
directly to the jurors were four other Atlantans who said they were either in
the courtroom or in the vicinity during the incidents mentioned. According
to W. P. Neil, he was sitting adjacent to the jury box near the end of the trial
when a man he could not identify "took hold of one of the jurors with one
hand, grasped his arm with the other and made a statement to him." Simi-
larly, two witnesses contended that they'd been driving down Pryor Street
on the Saturday before the verdict when they'd spotted the twelve out for a
constitutional, accompanied not just by an escort of deputies but by five or
six hangers-on who engaged the putatively sequestered men in conversa-
tion. While these deponents could not attest to what was spoken during the
encounters they had observed, this was not the case with Isaac Hazan. As
he told it, at midday on the trial's last Friday, he'd watched a group of ten or
fifteen toughs accost the jurors on their way to lunch, shouting "that unless
they brought in a verdict of guilty, they would kill the whole damn bunch."

Hugh Dorsey's response to the defense's second salvo was of a piece with
his response to the first. He remained in Valdosta, while his surrogates in
Atlanta disseminated just enough information to keep Rosser and Arnold

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 353

from stealing all the headlines. Atticus Henslee, for instance, revealed that
he had, in fact, publicly expressed a belief in Frank's guilt— but after the
verdict was in. At the same time, the solicitor's office announced that
Detectives John Starnes and Pat Campbell were back on the job, collecting
depositions supporting the integrity of Henslee and Johenning and investi-
gating their detractors. Two hundred miles away or not, Dorsey was evinc-
ing his characteristic dexterity.

The hearing on the motion for a new trial convened in the state capitol
library at 9 a.m. on a crisp October Wednesday. Physically, the setting could
not have been more sedate. Facing walls lined by dusty volumes and warmed
by a coal fire on a metal grate, the lawyers— Rosser, Arnold, Herbert Haas
and his cousin and fellow attorney, Leonard Haas, for the defense; Dorsey,
Stephens and Frank Hooper for the state— sat at opposite ends of a long
table, with Judge Roan in the middle. Though a couple of dozen curiosity
seekers milled about in an adjacent hall, only reporters and detectives were
granted admission. No sooner had the session started than it became clear
that the state intended to challenge the wording of each of the motion's 1 15
grounds. Before the larger issues could be debated, every bit of the language
in which they were framed would have to be hashed out.

By midmorning, a rancorous and time-consuming pattern had emerged.
Rosser would read a ground aloud, Dorsey would object to its construction,
Rosser or Arnold would object to the objection, then Roan would consider
the competing merits and make his ruling. Typical was the clash over
ground seven, which as originally submitted stated that Frank deserved a
new trial because the court had erred in allowing John Black to testify that
the factory superintendent employed counsel the Monday following Mary
Phagan's murder. The solicitor took issue with the phrase "employed coun-
sel," maintaining that the detective had in actuality said "had counsel." A
review of the transcript proved Dorsey correct, whereupon Rosser indi-
cated his displeasure by pounding a newly acquired cane on the floor and
snarling: "You'd hang this man on the dotting of an T or the crossing of a
't.' " Replied the solicitor: "You're making a mountain out of a mole hill."
Either way, the judge ordered that the ground be reworded.

The summer's hostilities had yet to subside. On this first day, Dorsey
spent the hour before lunch and an hour after arguing that the five grounds
asserting that the court erred in accepting Conley's sexually charged testi-
mony into evidence had to be rephrased to include a crucial fact that
Frank's lawyers had curiously omitted— namely, that the defense did not
object to the material until after cross-examining the Negro. Roan con-
curred. Conversely, Rosser devoted considerable time to fending off the

354 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

solicitor's attempt to water down a ground contending that the jurors
had been intimidated by "the pronounced and continuous applause" that
greeted the court's decision to overrule the objection to Conley's explicit
testimony. Here, Roan not only found for the defense but voiced his opin-
ion that the twelve must have heard the outburst. Through it all, the tenor
of the debate remained ugly. At 6 p.m., when the combatants went home for
the evening, the judge had checked off only 42 of the motion's 1 15 grounds
on a list he kept at his fingertips, and the names Johenning and Henslee had
not been uttered.

On Thursday, despite the urging of Judge Roan to make haste and cease
scrapping, the pace was again slow and tempers short. The day began with
Arnold reading grounds 43 through 47 of the motion, each of which dealt
with witnesses who'd been used by the state to accuse Frank of acts of
immorality. As the defense saw it, the allegations of Irene Jackson and
Willie TUrner and the examination of Lula Wardlaw were prejudicial, and
the court had erred by allowing them into evidence. Dorsey took issue with
this view. Because the defense had not objected to the material during the
trial, he argued, it could not do so now. True, conceded Arnold, he and
Rosser had said nothing at the time, but, he then added, only because their
earlier objection to the solicitor's questioning of John Ashley Jones— the
insurance agent whose grilling regarding the factory superintendent's al-
leged fondling of an employee's breasts sparked Rae Frank's attack on
Dorsey— served as an omnibus objection to any later such exchanges. After
briefly puzzling over the matter, the judge ruled in the defense's favor.

Yet splendidly as things had gone for Rosser and Arnold at the morning
session, following lunch the results were more mixed. The lawyers kicked
off the afternoon by returning to the topic of the demonstrations that had
periodically rocked the courtroom during the trial. But before they could
read a single ground, Dorsey, still smarting from Roan's declaration of
the day before regarding the outburst that greeted the decision to overrule
the defense's objection to Conley's explicit testimony, asserted that the
judge had no right to express such sentiments. "I can give my opinion if I
wish," replied Roan, apparently putting an end to the matter. However, as
Rosser proceeded to read each succeeding ground— one addressing the
Friday afternoon demonstration, another the Monday morning display, still
another a third incident— the judge again and again ordered that the
defense's phrase "which the jury heard" be changed to read "which perhaps
the jury could have heard."

When the hearing resumed Friday at 9 a.m., just a few grounds remained
to be covered, the first of them involving, at long last, Johenning and
Henslee. To these, Dorsey offered no protest, preferring to wait until he
could contest the actual substance of the charges. The solicitor was likewise

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 355

silent regarding several subsequent points. By midmorning, all that was left
was a ground concerning the events that had prompted Rosser and Arnold
to forfeit their client's presence at the reading of the verdict. To this, Dorsey
did take exception, declaring that the lawyers had agreed to the arrange-
ment at the time of its proposal and therefore lacked the right to revisit it.
Rosser countered that the ferocity of the crowds was so great that they'd
been forced into the decision. Moreover, the lawyer added that the pande-
monium greeting the guilty verdict had denied Frank his ultimate safe-
guard—a quiet polling of the jurors. As proof of how bad the climate was,
Rosser cited Roan's decision on the trial's final Saturday to allow the solic-
itor to halt his argument. In the process, the lawyer not only confirmed the
report that the action had been taken due to fear of violence, but shed light
on a piece of information that explained why Atlanta's newspapers had said
nothing— the editors of the Constitution, the Journal and the Georgian had
themselves secretly urged the judge to bring down the gavel. Confronted by
these facts, Dorsey shrugged his shoulders, and Roan ended the session by
accepting the concluding ground as written.

In theory, the presentation of the two sides' supporting documents— the
task that would consume most of Friday afternoon and the final step before
the commencement of formal arguments— did not offer much promise of
headline-making revelations. And as Rosser and Arnold alternated in recit-
ing the defense's affidavits, all of which had been dissected in the press dur-
ing the past month, the low expectations seemed more than warranted. Yet
no sooner had Frank's lawyers wrapped up and Dorsey begun to speak than
pulses quickened, for the solicitor started off by dropping a bombshell.
According to the statement of jury foreman Fred Winburn, not only was the
embattled Atticus H. Henslee not biased against Frank, he had been the
panel's lone holdout against conviction. In a quietly confident voice meant
to underscore the significance of the jury foreman's disclosure, Dorsey read:

I did not know how A. H. Henslee stood on the issue until after the first
ballot had been taken; then said Henslee made a talk and stated that he
had cast a doubtful ballot; there was one ballot marked "doubtful"; he
explained to the jury why he cast this doubtful ballot, and submitted some
suggestions with reference to the evidence. Up to that time, so far as I
know, said Henslee had not intimated or expressed any opinion whatso-
ever with reference to any feature of the case.

The import of Winburn's affidavit was instantly apparent, and Dorsey
followed it with nearly verbatim pronouncements from the other jurors—

35 6 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

to a soul, they seconded their foreman's assertion that had it not been
for Henslee, they would have convicted Frank on the initial ballot. The
clincher, however, was an affidavit from the buggy salesman himself. In the
same steady tone with which he'd put forward the previous statements,
the solicitor read:

As illustrating the attitude which I occupied in this case, I will say that
when it came time to vote, I cast a doubtful ballot. I did this on the first ballot
because of the unanimity of opinion that Frank was guilty, as expressed by
those jurors who discussed it after the court's charge and prior to the ballot,
and for the purpose of forcing a full and free discussion of the case before
rendering a verdict, as we understood it might consign Frank to his death.
When on the second and last ballot a unanimous verdict of "Guilty" was
rendered, I— in common with each and every other man on the jury —wept.

In the matter of a few moments, Dorsey had called into question one of
the defense's central premises. As the solicitor continued to read from
Henslee's statement, he went even further. According to the buggy sales-
man, contrary to the allegations of Samuel Aron, he'd never said to a group
at the Atlanta Elks Club: "I'm glad they indicted the God damned Jew."
Nor would he have. "The club has among its members a large number of
Jewish people, many of whom are my friends." Henslee's response to Mack
Farkas's assertion was equally convincing. Not only did he deny having seen
the Albany livery stable proprietor in the weeks before the proceedings, he
said that when he did call following Frank's conviction, he refrained from
discussing the case "because the said Mack Farkas and the said Leo M.
Frank were of the same religion and [I] did not want to hurt his feelings."

Having thus done what he could to rehabilitate Henslee, Dorsey next
tried to rehabilitate Marcellus Johenning. First, the solicitor read affidavits
from Winburn,Townsend and the others, all of whom swore that at no time
during the trial did their fellow juror "express himself in a way to indicate
that he was in the least bit prejudiced against Leo M. Frank." Then came the
predictable statement from Johenning himself, in which he not only denied
having felt or expressed any prejudice against the factory superintendent
but pointed out that the Lovenharts were "of the same race and religion of
Leo M.Frank."

While Johenning's assertions lacked the dramatic certitude of Henslee's,
they effectively played upon the widely held view that Atlanta's Jews had
blindly taken up Frank's cause. On their strength, Dorsey switched gears,
introducing a number of statements to refute Rosser and Arnold's claim
that the trial's partisan crowds had terrorized the jury into its verdict. The

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 357

solicitor began by reading affidavits from each of the twelve men at the
heart of the debate. Typical was the statement of the hardware store sales-
man Monroe S.Woodward, who, Dorsey related, had deposed:

I did not at any time, while a juror, hear any applause except such as
occurred in open court, and which was heard by the judge and attorneys in
the case; I did not know there had been any cheering of anybody con-
nected with the case at any time or that there had been any cheering in any
way growing out of or connected with the Frank case, until after the verdict
was rendered, and I was told about said incidents. The jury left the court-
room before the judge, lawyers and audience were permitted to leave, and
there was never any applause or cheering inside of the court or outside of
the court within my knowledge while the case was being considered.

A general disavowal thereby issued, the solicitor tendered Woodward's dis-
missals of a number of the defense's specific claims regarding the specta-
tors' impact on the jury. For starters, the salesman disputed the charge that
a group of hangers-on had strolled alongside the twelve during their consti-
tutional on the trial's final Saturday. Then he denied the allegation that
someone in the gallery had shaken hands with and spoken to one of the
jurors. Finally, he denied the contention that the hurrahs following the ver-
dict had influenced the polling of the jury.

Once he'd finished with the affidavits of Woodward and the others,
Dorsey introduced supporting statements from court officials. Echoing the
view that the jurors were not compromised by any of the trial's commotions
or by contact with crowd members were the deputy in charge of security
during the proceedings, the bailiffs who'd guarded the panel and the clerk
of the superior court. These men were also unanimous in their dismissal of
several of the defense's related allegations, most significantly Isaac Hazan's
charge that rowdies had threatened the jurors with violence if they did not
vote to convict.

After Dorsey read a last batch of affidavits, each of them attacking the
integrity of one of the defense's standard-bearers and all undoubtedly
obtained by Detectives Starnes and Campbell, Reuben Arnold took the
floor. The lawyer began his argument by speaking directly to Judge Roan:

It takes thirteen jurors to murder a man in cold blood. So I feel I am not
only justified but required, by the scope of your honor's authority and duty
and the tremendous responsibility that rests upon you, to argue to the
court the facts of this unusual case.

358 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

This was a bold statement. Instead of addressing the points put forth in the
motion, Arnold intended to readdress the evidence, sidestepping the body
that had found against his client. As he saw it, he had no choice. Declared
the lawyer: A religious bias "that has reflected no credit for two thousand
years on the race to which your honor and I belong" infiltrated the court-
room, affecting the panel's judgment. The result:

Argument was lost upon that jury. There they sat, huddled like twelve
sheep in the shambles. Talk to me about those jurors not having been influ-
enced by such surroundings. They may not know they were. Nor did the
rabbit that ran through the briar patch know which briar scratched and
which did not.

That said, Arnold plunged into the task of convincing his audience of
one. His first topic— Jim Conley. Asked the lawyer:

Was ever a case heard of before where the only witness on whose testi-
mony the conviction rested was a party to the crime both before it was
committed, by watching, and after it was committed, by helping to conceal
the body; was a criminal of the lowest type and as absolutely devoid of con-
science as a man-eating tiger; one who lied in writing four different times,
and who never confessed anything about the crime until the evidence was
discovered on him that he had written the notes that accompanied the
body; who admitted he lied many times in his affidavits; and where after he
made his last affidavit, the story that he brought into court was so unlike it
that you could hardly recognize any points of similarity?

Arnold then reiterated the defense's theories regarding the origination
of Conley's tale. The Negro, he told Roan, had heard "the slanders uttered
against Frank" during the days following Mary Phagan's murder. After
Conley's connection to the notes was subsequently discovered, "he saw his
own life trembling in the balance and was compelled to say someone else
was the real author and he named Frank." His initial statement, however,
was rife with improbabilities. "Left alone," Mister Rube asserted, "the
negro spread out over the whole territory of asininity." Which was why the
detectives lent a hand. "They took his story like you would take a rough
piece of timber and fashioned it over with the power of machinery." And it
wasn't just the investigators who were involved. Tbrning to face Dorsey,
Arnold accused the solicitor of interjecting the "perversion evidence" into
the trial "merely to prejudice the jury." Then, turning back to the judge, he
brought Friday's session to a scalding close:

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 359

If Leo Frank is hanged, I'd rather be dead and rotting in my grave than
in Hugh Dorsey's place. His conscience will drive him crazy, distracted and
to God only knows what ends. And it will be no less than his just deserts.

Saturday, Arnold directed Roan's attention to weaknesses in the state's
circumstantial evidence. First, he dismissed the incriminating inferences
Dorsey had drawn from Frank's April 26 letter to his uncle, insisting that
such expressions as "it's too short a time since you left for anything startling
to have developed" were commonplace. Then he repeated the defense's
chronology of the murder day, reasserting that Mary Phagan did not reach
the pencil factory until 12:10 p.m. — five minutes after Monteen Stover
claimed to have entered the superintendent's office and discovered it empty.
"Your honor," the lawyer insisted, "the state's case falls to the ground here.
Jim Conley says Mary Phagan came in before Monteen Stover came in."
And there were other discrepancies. After reminding the judge that the
Negro maintained it was 12:56 when Frank asked him to move the body,
Arnold posed a tough question: If, as several experts swore, the job and the
subsequent note writing took over thirty minutes, then how could such wit-
nesses as Helen Kerns and Mrs. Albert Levy have seen Frank standing on a
downtown corner at 1:10 and exiting a streetcar near his house at 1:20?
There was only one answer: Frank, as he'd stated, had departed the building
at 1:00, unaware that a crime had been committed. "Your honor," declared
the lawyer, "this is not a case of believing the defendant to be innocent; we
are demonstrating his innocence."

Arnold next raised the topic of Frank's character. After once again prais-
ing the "upright and honorable" men and women whom he and Rosser had
put on the stand to vouch for the superintendent, he attacked the former
factory employees Dorsey had called to rebut such praise. Dismissing Irene
Jackson and the others as members of "the discharged employee class," he
told Roan: "Class hatred was played on here." Which was why, he added,
several of the state's witnesses had tried to link the plant superintendent
sexually with forelady Rebecca Carson. "Those little girls had been dis-
charged by Miss Carson and glad to say anything against her." Was it any
wonder, the lawyer then asked, that he and Rosser had not cross-examined
them? "These girls could have been loaded with five thousand slanders.
That was what was done with Jim Conley. Every question we asked on that
line would have been used before that gaping mob against us."

Arnold next fired several salvos at the state's evidence suggesting a his-
tory of improprieties on Frank's part. Regarding Conley's testimony that he
had served as a lookout over a period of several months while the superin-
tendent conducted liaisons with girls in his office, the lawyer was incredu-

360 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

lous. "That 'watching' story is preposterous. What good could Conley have
done? What white man could this negro have kept out anyhow? But to bol-
ster up their theory, some reason had to be given why Conley and Frank
were coming in contact in a transaction that would ordinarily admit no con-
fidants." Then there was the individual the solicitor had put on the stand to
lend credence to Conley's allegations. With evident loathing, Frank's co-
counsel spat: "Dalton! In this case they seem to have seined the lowest
strata of society for the ugliest, dirtiest reptiles that move about in the ooze
of the bottom."

Thus far, Arnold had confined himself to matters that he and Rosser had
covered at least in part during their closing arguments at the trial, but he
now steered Roan to a subject that the duo had unaccountably avoided—
the murder notes. "These notes," he said, "are negro notes from beginning
to end. They are idiotic and ridiculous and inconceivable to the intelligent
brain." The lawyer then ticked off several particulars that he believed laid
the missives' authorship at Conley's feet. For openers, he asserted that a
phrase in the note jotted on the pencil company order blank indicated that
Mary Phagan, just as the defense had maintained, had been murdered in
the factory lobby: "This note says, 'He pushed me down that hole.' There is
no hole she could have been pushed down in the metal room, but there are
two holes on the ground floor at the bottom of the steps. One is the elevator
shaft, the other is the trap door down which the ladder leads. Conley, know-
ing that he pushed the girl down one of these holes, unconsciously brings
this fact out in the note." Then there was the line in the other note declaring
that "a long tall black negro did this by hisself." Though the solicitor had
maintained that the phrase fingered Frank in attempting to hide that two
men were involved in the crime, Arnold believed that in actuality it
reflected Conley's attempt to lay the murder at the feet of a slender Negro
who had heretofore been unmentioned in the case, a plant boiler opera-
tor— "the negro hire down here"— named William Nolle. Finally, there was
the fact that the notes existed at all, which to Arnold's thinking was incom-
patible with Conley's statement that the original plan had been to burn the
body. "Conley," the lawyer argued, "saw that he must come up with an
explanation for the notes. So he says they were written so that if he never
came back to burn the body they would explain the killing. Yet Frank had
no reason to believe the negro would not come back. Was ever an explana-
tion more preposterous?"

Arnold's dissection of the notes, while long overdue, was cogent and
effective. But his comments on the topic with which he concluded Satur-
day's session— the defense's failure to place William H. Mincey on the
stand— were less so. Though he explained the initial enthusiasm those in
Frank's camp felt for the insurance salesman ("Mincey claimed that Conley

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 361

made to him a certain statement") and justified Rosser's grilling of Conley
regarding the salesman ("It was our duty"), as to why the much anticipated
witness was never called, he could say only:

Mincey's tale may have been true, but it did not impress us as evidence
that was probable and reasonable, and rather than burden our case with
anything doubtful, we decided against putting him up.

Monday morning, after having spoken for the better part of three days,
Arnold ended his argument where he had begun it. Anti-Semitism, he again
asserted, offered the sole plausible rationale for the zeal with which the
police had pursued Frank and the hostility that had surrounded the trial.
Dorsey, he once more proclaimed, had fed "the poison of prejudice to those
jaybirds in the jury box," one of whom— and here the lawyer made his lone
reference to anything contained in the motion actually before the court—
was Atticus H. Henslee. All of it, he repeated, had blinded the twelve to the
truth: "The murderer of Mary Phagan was Jim Conley, a perpetual law-
breaker who has a law-breaking race back of him." Having so stated,
Arnold turned to Roan and urgently implored:

If your honor denies this motion, so far as the facts are concerned, this
case is forever at rest. The Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over ques-
tions of fact where the witnesses are in conflict. It takes errors of law for
that court to interfere. Your honor alone has the duty and responsibility of
approving this verdict or setting it aside.

Not surprisingly, Frank partisans took great heart from Arnold's oratory,
anticipating not only a favorable ruling but, for the resulting rehearing of
the case, a change of venue to the presumably less hostile port city of
Savannah. Speculated the Constitution's front-page headline: next trial
may be held in Chatham county. Yet even as such hopeful prospects
were being bandied about, back in the capitol library the state's lawyers
were launching into their speeches, and from the start it was plain that they
regarded Arnold's argument as beside the point. The murder notes' prove-
nance, Jim Conley 's veracity— the jury had already ruled on these matters.
As Hugh Dorsey and Frank Hooper saw it, the sole issues at stake were
those that had been raised in the amended motion.

As at the trial, Hooper spoke first, his primary task once again to pave
the way for Dorsey. Beginning shortly after Monday's lunch break, the
solicitor's co-counsel cast doubt on what the state viewed as the motion's
most vexing ground— the allegations of prejudice against Henslee. Terming
the charges "improbable and ridiculous," Hooper denounced the individu-

362 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

als who'd given the defense supporting affidavits, accusing them at best of
being mistaken, at worst of lying.

Following Hooper's brief remarks, Dorsey rose to his feet, but with the
cool autumn dusk already descending, he had time only to convey a hint of
what was to come, proclaiming:

If the verdict of guilty against Leo Frank is set aside upon such trivial
grounds as the convicted man's lawyers recite in their motion, it will justify
very largely the contempt in which people are beginning to hold their
courts and the administration of their laws.

Tuesday morning, Dorsey embarked on his presentation in earnest, begin-
ning, predictably enough, with the subject of Henslee. He dismissed the
accusations leveled against the juror, then declared that even if he had
made the comments attributed to him, they did not constitute evidence
of pretrial prejudice. Rather, Henslee had merely expressed his opinion,
which, insisted the solicitor, was his right.

Till this point, Dorsey had maintained a conversational tone, but as he
took up his next topic— Arnold's allegations regarding the purported anti-
Semitism that had permeated the proceedings— he grew indignant:

The people were not aroused against Leo M. Frank because he is a Jew
but because he is a criminal of the worst type. In the name of the Gentiles
of Atlanta, I declare that when the counsel for the defense charges the jury
with bias and charges Atlantans with intimidating the jury with a display of
mob spirit, they are slandering the citizenship of the entire community.

That said, Dorsey conceded that "the people in the streets did holler for
me." By his lights, however, the outbursts were meaningless. "The counsel
for the defense has chosen to warp them."

In the wake of his comments on the trial's atmospherics, Dorsey com-
menced his principal response to Arnold's argument. For three days, he
said, Frank's co-counsel had "ranged far and wide." He was "eloquent
tongued" and "impressively trembling." But none of it was relevant. "As I
understand it," the solicitor reminded Roan, "the only matters on which
your honor is to pass are the question of bias on the part of the jurors, the
question of cheering and demonstrations, questions of law and the question
of Conley's evidence in respect to the defendant's moral conduct."

With that, Dorsey cited a number of precedents upholding the admissi-
bility of Conley's controversial testimony. Then he turned to Roan and by
way of ending declared:

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 363

Your honor said at the close of the trial that you had endeavored to see
that Frank was given a fair and impartial trial. Either that statement meant
everything or nothing.

Late Tuesday, Luther Rosser inaugurated the hearing's concluding argu-
ment by reemphasizing his belief in Frank's innocence, telling Roan, "As
God is in the heavens above, I believe that in yonder cell rests an innocent
man."

Wednesday, Rosser came on even stronger, taking violent issue with
Dorsey's claim that in condemning the throngs congregating in the streets
during the trial, Arnold had defamed all of Georgia:

What does Mr. Dorsey mean by the charge that Mr. Arnold criticized
the whole state? Does he mean that those who crowded around the court-
house crying for blood are the people he so obligingly serves? If they are
the people, thank God I do not serve them. They were there deliberately to
scream with delight because the blood of a human being was about to be
shed.

Though characteristic of Rosser, such talk was more than bombast. Real-
izing Dorsey, by ducking Arnold's sorties against the state's evidence, had
undercut that line of attack, Frank's lead counsel was mounting a last-ditch
campaign to highlight the amended motion's most compelling particulars.
Accordingly, Rosser reviewed the allegations of pretrial bias against Johen-
ning. He then revisited the affidavits involving Henslee. Which left one last
ground— the solicitor's decision to elicit Conley's testimony accusing Frank
of perversion. Hirning to Dorsey, Rosser charged:

You might as well have put the brand of Cain upon Frank's forehead as
to have introduced that revolting and maliciously false testimony. You
destroyed his life the instant you brought that in. There is no doubt about
it. When Conley poured out his filthy tale, there was left in the mind of the
jurors no room for any thought that Frank might be innocent of murder. It
damned him instantly.

Hirning back to Roan, the lawyer brought his oration to a close:

Dismiss from your mind, your honor, the anarchy that the solicitor gen-
eral threatens if another trial is granted. I dispute, your honor, that a new
trial would be a blow to the judiciary. It will instead preserve justice, for
there will come a time when the people will wonder how such things could
have taken place as occurred in the trial of this man.

364 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

By 9 a.m. Friday, Judge Roan's Thrower Building chambers were packed
to overflowing.The familiar players— Dorsey, Hooper, Arnold and Rosser—
sat up front, while an army of reporters, several members of the Selig family
and as many of the curious as the space allowed stood along the walls. After
spending Thursday in deliberation, Roan had reached his decision, and the
suspense, noted the Georgian, "was greater than the time last August when
the crowd was awaiting the verdict against Frank." Yet unlike that hot after-
noon, on this last day of October the mood was sober. Observed Hearst's
man: "Impressed by the portentousness of the occasion, the people in the
room looked on in silence and a certain dread expectancy."

For an hour, the tension mounted as Roan reviewed the motion, assuring
himself that its grounds had been reconciled and affixing his signature
where required. Then, at 10:04, with a slight tremor in his voice, the judge
began to speak:

Gentlemen, I have thought about this case more than any other I have
ever tried. I am not certain of this man's guilt. With all the thought I have
put on this case, I am not thoroughly convinced that Frank is guilty or in-
nocent.

In the end, though, Roan's misgivings were not at issue here, for the law—
as Hooper and Dorsey had contended— was clear, and it was the law that
would prevail. Thus the judge concluded:

But I do not have to be convinced. The jury was convinced. There is no
room to doubt that. I feel it is my duty to order that the motion for a new
trial be overruled.

The immediate reaction by the members of Frank's legal team was one of
bitter disappointment. Within a few seconds, however, Rosser had recov-
ered sufficiently to confirm that the defense would appeal and to insist that
the judge's stunning admission of uncertainty be included in the Bill of
Exceptions that would carry the case to the Supreme Court of Georgia. To
this, Dorsey furiously objected. Yet before the dispute could escalate, Roan
ended it by simply directing that his remarks go into the record. Which
meant that terrible as the defeat that Frank had suffered was, the high
court, whose winter term was slated to begin in mid-December, would have
to take into account the trial judge's pronouncement that he entertained
doubts as to the condemned man's guilt.

The debate regarding Roan's extraordinary statement began almost
instantaneously. Proclaimed the Georgian: "Judge Roan has put himself at

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 365

the head of that group of men and women who only ask for fair play." Out
in the state, however, the consensus was less favorable. "Judge Roan dis-
played very bad taste and less judgment," declared one rural weekly.
Asserted another: "It was none of Roan's business to be convinced of
Frank's guilt."

There were equally heated discussions in legal circles regarding whether
Roan's remarks would influence the Supreme Court's thinking. Though no
one from either side commented publicly, privately lawyers in the defense
camp believed that the judge had guaranteed the appeal's success. In fact,
even as Rabbi Marx and Leonard Haas were informing Frank of Roan's
decision (the condemned man took the news stoically, although Lucille,
who was with him at the Tower, once more burst into tears), Herbert Haas
was writing Louis Marshall:

Our Supreme Court has held more than once that it will reverse the
judgment of the lower court declining a motion for a new trial where, in the
bill of exceptions, it is certified that the presiding judge himself is in doubt
as to the guilt of the defendant.

On the evening of Saturday, November 8, exactly a week and a day after
Leo Frank's motion for a new trial was rejected, a group of the nation's
most powerful and best-known Jewish leaders filed into the Trustees Room
of New York's ornate Temple Emanu-El, the city's preeminent Reform syn-
agogue. The occasion was the monthly meeting of the executive committee
of the American Jewish Committee, Louis Marshall presiding. Among
those present were the Hebraic scholar and writer Cyrus Adler, United
Jewish Charities president Cyrus L. Sulzberger and Chicago judge Joseph
L. Mack, one of two Jews on the board of Harvard University. But by far the
most commanding figure was Jacob H. Schiff, managing partner of the mer-
chant banking house of Kuhn, Loeb and Company and the sole American
financier acknowledged by J. Pierpont Morgan as a peer.

The topic that would dominate the committee's discussion, as the
recording secretary delicately put it, was "the case of Leo M. Frank, the
young man who was recently convicted of murder in Atlanta." At issue was
whether the group, in the wake of the factory superintendent's latest set-
back, should enter the fray, and the members— despite unanimity as to the
merits of the matter— were split regarding tactics. Arguing in favor of open
involvement was Schiff. Imperious in his frock coat and white tie and ani-
mated by an abiding concern with social justice for his coreligionists, the
banker wanted to start a public fund. (Frank's defense had thus far cost
$50,000— most of it coming from his uncle Moses, who'd recently expressed
a reluctance to keep spending.) Taking the other view, not surprisingly, was

366 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Marshall. "It would be most unfortunate if our organization were to be con-
sidered championing the causes of Jews who are convicted of crimes," he
explained. Such a position was, of course, consistent with Marshall's initial
stance, yet it sprang from more than adherence to principle. A backlash
against Jewish support for Frank had begun to manifest itself —and not just
in Georgia.

jews fight to save leo frank, declared the headline atop the lengthy
recapitulation of the case that dominated the New York Sun's October 12
editions. The murder of Mary Phagan, the factory superintendent's arrest,
the trial— all were evenhandedly presented. But when the piece, the first
major account to run in the Northern press, raised the question of whether
Frank's Jewishness had played a role in the outcome, it expressed doubt,
noting: "Atlanta is probably freer of the Juden-hetze spirit than any city in
the South." This was fair comment. What followed, however, was worri-
some:

Prejudice did finally develop against Frank and also against the Jews.
But Frank's friends were responsible for this anti-Semitic spirit.

Some Jews were credited with saying that even if Frank did kill Mary
Phagan she was nothing but a factory girl.

Such remarks as these soon caused a decided anti-Semitic feeling and it
continued to grow during the trial of Frank. The feeling was increased
when Frank's mother, who came here from Brooklyn to attend her son's
trial, denounced Mr. Dorsey in the courtroom as "You Christian dog."

The anti-Semitic feeling was the natural result of the belief that the
Jews had banded to free Frank, innocent or guilty. The supposed solidarity
of the Jews for Frank, even if he was guilty, caused a Gentile solidarity
against him.

The choice facing the American Jewish Committee's executive commit-
tee was a stark one. To campaign publicly for Frank's exoneration would be
to risk further charges of Jewish interference. Conversely, to do nothing
would be to leave the factory superintendent without assistance from an
organization whose purpose was to combat the very anti-Semitism that
appeared to have been involved here. In the end, however, there was a third
way, and it is what prevailed. Though the group closed the session by
"resolving to take no action with respect to the Frank case," from this night
forth, its members would work, just as Marshall had hoped, behind the
scenes. The goal: to build a nationwide coalition of influential Jews who,
whatever the decision by the Supreme Court of Georgia, could raise money
for and shape opinion during the protracted fight that was sure to follow.

' :; . ??.

Rudolph and Rae Frank, circa 1895
(William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, Atlanta)

Lea Frank, age nine (wbjhma)

Leo Frank (right) with a friend in his Cornell dorm room, circa 1905

(wbjhma)

Leo Frank on Cornd] + 5 tennis courts, circa 1905

(wbjhjua)

Lucille Selig, circa 1909
(wfijhma)

Lucille Selig and Leo Frank, circa 1909
(wbjhma)

Mary Phagan, circa 1913
(Joe McTyre Collection, Alpharetta, Georgia)

National Pencil Company, circa 1913
(Atlanta History Center)

It

ncJPX/O.

37 £ 39 SOUTH FORSYTH ST.

Bell Phone Main 171

Atlanta. Ca„ : 1SK)^_«

"fe."'

PWT THIS ORDER tiUMBBR ON YOUR BILL. 1 I ^77" \

— *&;;- .;

Order No..

*Hs*S

jfj^.r.' :auv Ain^M^l

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■'YJUjJ^M^

#s'.aa& X^-mXj jjjbjyyjti/ Ala JLh j/jJ^o^c "

I ft

The murder notes

(American Jewish Archives,

Cincinnati Campus, Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion)

M'KII, ">*

In Hi- i-Im^ip'"" i| ii u** tfeftVftl H*> .tr-Pt, |tj who**. »Ui« ha! ;* «l< Kp ' nut ri ' »tr riMiuii*
II In Hun |*h;l</.-Ji WU*T\ Hfe* 1 WW f IH i- iv*l ,it*i» itfth- HlKW Willi U Uicll Oi* Wm sTnihtflriJ

A photograph of the clothes Mary Phagan was wearing

when she was murdered and the rope with which she was strangled,

which ran in the Atlanta Georgian on April 30, 1913

An editorial cartoon in
the Atlanta Constitution that attacks the Atlanta police, May II, 19 13

Atlanta police headquarters, circa 1913
(Atlanta History Center)

The Atlanta Georgian IXfflANoJi!

USSTIEA*

vr\i. SI >;u sa*

POLICE HAVE THE STRANGLER

MAUI.

koneon

iNTENEGRO

Late this afternoon, Chief of Detectives La n for J made
this important statement to a Georgian reporter: "We
have the strangles in my opinion the crime he* between
two men, the negro watchman. Newt Lee and Frank, We
have eliminated John Cantt and Arthur MuNinax."

JL-Tl^SKyirjg^ SZ&F RA NK A ND NEGRO ARE
* GIVEN i"THlRD DEGREE"

The Atlanta Georgian, April 29, 1913

Hugh Dorsey
{Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Luther Rosser, uncharacteristically wearing a tie* 1913
(wbjhma)

Jim Conley T [913
( Watson 's Magazine)

Reuben Arnold, 1913
(Courtesy Thomas Arnold)

William Smith,

"A Tramp Alumnus," circa 1900

(Courtesy Walter Smith)

Leo and Lucille Frank at the trial
(Joe McTyre Collection, A Ipharetta, Georgia)

Hugh Dorsey examining Newt Lee on the opening day of the trial
(William Pullen Library, Georgia State University)

Leo Frank portrait for Collier's, 1914
(wbjhma)

Tom Watson at the time of the Frank case

(Southern Historical Collection,

The Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Governor John Slaton, 1915
(Joe McTyre Collection, Alpharetla. Georgia)

Downtown Atlanta, looking North on Peachtree Street, 1914
(Atlanta History Center)

Herbert Clay at the wheel with Marietta belles, circa 1910
(Marietta Museum of History)

Advertising magnate Albert D. Lasker
(Corbis)

Detective Williarn Burns
(Corbis)

The interior of the Georgia State Prison Farm in MiiledgeviUe, 1915

(Corbis)

AdolphS.Ochs
(HuUon Archive)

William Randolph Hearst
(Hulton Archive)

e3effer50nia

Vol. 12, No. 34

Thomson, Ga„ Thursday, August 26, 1915

Price, Five Cent*

"Tiie Wages of Sin is Death

**.

" FUN AH, the daughter of Jacob . . . went

' L ^ out to see the dnnghters oT the land;
and when Shcchem, . . . prince of the coun-
try, yiw her. ha took her, and- lay with her,
and deplcd ha:

And it came to pnss, on the third day,
when (hey were- sore, two of" t'«e sons of
Jaeob, Simeon find Levi, . . . too 1 ' enc h man
his sword, nnd came upon' the ciiy (of the
prince), and ttfow aTl the malet.

And they slew Shoehorn "(and Hamor,
his father) with the edge of the. sSvord, and
took Djrnh out of Shechenrs house.

The sons of Jacob en mo upon the slain,
and spoiled t he city, because they had dc-
f\Ud fhciv sister.

And nil their wealth, and nil their chil-
. 'dreri. (little ones) and their wirns took Lhey
captive."

Aivd when Jncob whimpered Jiis fears
that tjio Cannnnifes and rerizziles would
combine against the .few Jewv' and kill
them, Jacob's bold, sons sternly answered
their father:

"Should he (QhefehenO d'al w'h OUR.
SISTER, as with an harlott" , *

(Genesis. 34tit chapter.)
"""Kohbi'W-isr. of- XeAV York C^af^k«OUJ5a;j
dca;U against' cvei'y -member of iw^'igilance
Commit teo which executed -upon Leo Frank
the sentence the Laui had th'ct tinges pro-
nounced in the court roomj find which the
' Shei-jfi" would have executed, had not one
of. 2? rani? $ own, lawyers illegally commuted
'Ms sentence.

■Rabbi Wise fiercely demands that every
official connected with our Prison establish-
ment, be sent to tho penitentiary for life.

Eabbi Wise, Nathan Straus, and the Jew-
ish pettifogger, Louis Morshall, demands
that I bo indicted for murder.

Mary Phagan was not Jacob's daughter,
you sec.

Mary Phagan was not the sister of
Jacob's sons, yon see.

Mary Phagan was nothing but a Canann-
ite; and the Jewish prince, thorcfore, had
a right to tnho her and defilo her — the young
prince who slept in a blue silk flight gown-y

when the sons of the Cnnaanites came upon
him.

' The sons of Jacob did not accuse SWchem
of violence to their sister. Dinah ap-
penved to be willing. She was continuing
to live with the prince. He hnd not strnck
her in the foce, v knocked her against » crank
Jinndle, rendered her unconscious, and then
choked her to death with a cord.

Dinah made, no complaint: Dinah evi-
dently meant to remain with the prince.

Hnmor, the fnther of the young prince,
went to Jacob, and pleaded with the pa-
triarch, urging him to give Dinah' to
Shechem in honorable marriage.

Shtehcm himself went humbly to Jncob,
and begged for Dinah in marriage.

All the reparation that any man can
make, after such, a sin, Shcchem. earnestly
offered -to make.

'With deceit in his heart (Urn Jewish
writer of Genesis says so) Jacob gave Ma ,
consent to the marriage, upon condition" that
nil the young males of the city of Hnmor
-and Shechem. be circuntxfccd.

■ By tin s highest court ■ j«f' earth, I.eo
Frank's trial was pronounced' legal
and fair.

By the highest court in Georgia, the ev-
idence was declared to be sufficient
to support the yerdict of the jury-

By the Judicial department -of our State
government, Frank's guilt had been as-
certained, and the death penalty im-
posed:

By one of hi* own Lawyers, the verdict
and the decisions were oil brushed

BY THE PEOPLE, that void act of
Frank's lawyer was ignored, and the
sentence carried out.

The Law forfeited this man's life,
for a horrible crime, arid he has paid.

That's all.

Now let outsiders attend to their own
business, AND LEAVE OURS ALONE.

Tha condition whs complied with: "every
mido was circumcised:" and then, it wai. that
the Jews, without any trial nt Inw, without
any sentence of any court, fell upon ..the
people whom they had craftily thrown o(F
their guard: and these Jews wreaked indis-
criminate slaughter upon young and old,
main and -female, innocent and guilty.

They slew the old father, Hninor, who
'had none to Ja/nh and pleaded for peace ,
rc\,ynrif}iitioi. and atonement.

'iVi >.'..• robbed every dweller in the city,
taking the cattle., the crops, and the wealth
stored in tho houses. -

They took the innocent icicct of the inno-
em/ men whom they had put to the sword-.

They took these i mux-en t wives into ca)>-
tivity, to become the slaves 'arid the con-
cubines of the Jews.

They took ' ; tho little ones" — the boys nnd
girls — to make servants, of them, and to use
the girls as Enstem^hisfc hns always used
' heTplesi women. --::■-■

There s the record! GO HEAT* ,17 ,

RA/iJil WISE/ Go and read it, Nathan

hi rant!

\ '\\~' '>' own scribes wrote it : nnd for more

1 •-■r-f "wo thousand years voir have held it

{.■*-. :o-^irredly true. • } f

Did your God sn net ion that vengeance,
visited upon- a- man and his people, because
of the defilement of one consenting Jcwest?

You say Ubat He did: you say that- He
blessed Jacob greatly, and you are exceed-
ini/ly iot\d of naming your sons after Simeon
and Lori^ the sons of Jacob, who did this
thing.

What about it, Rabbi Wise?

What about it, Nathan Straus?

Have you one code for n Jewess, nnd an-
other for a Gentile girl?

Tell us I Wo believe thnt you have; and
that you have secretly and powevfully or-
gan ized to enforco it.

We believe that your Imr exempts the
Jew who defiles the Gentile maiden.
■ We bolievo thnt your lau: permits the
■ libertine Jew to use our fiister, as an harlot.

If you haven't that kind of law in your
(continued ok pace two.)

FRANK VIRTUALLY CONFESSED. CEASED TO CLAIM INNOCENCE.

\1/HEN tho Vigilantes went into Frank's
v " room, at the State Farm, and told hun
they hod come for him, he did not seem
greatly surprised, and he made no outcry. '

He wfis led out by four men, making no
resistance. -if*«j*p ■■*.■**■■

Ho was not roughly treated. If the Sheriff
had been in charge of the execution, the pro-
ceedings could not havo been better con-
ducted.

He as'ribt bumped down the stone steps,
aS Northern papers have stated.

He was not "tortured" with questions, or
in any other way.

Twice, in the seven-hour automobile rido
of 170 miles, ho was asked if he killed Mary
Phngnu.
, Ho did not answer, r ' ' ■ ■>

Not once, in all that long rido to death,
did he protest his innocence.

When day overtook the Vigilantes, and
they decided to execute tho sentence of the.
Law two miles short of Mary Phngan's
grave, he was again asked if ho killed her.

Again he was mute/

Then he was asked if he wanted to make
any statement, and he answered, "No!"

Later, and as if speaking to himself, he
. used an expression which showed that he
preferred to die silent, rather than bring
shame upon his peoplo.

. A confession could not save him, and could
only bring additional grief upon his family.

Ho stoically closed his- lips, nnd paid the
penalty which the Law demanded.

He did not die protesting his innocence

to the last, as the Northern pnpers. 'nnd the
Hearst papers stnte,

The most significant feature of his con-
duct, during that seven hours" ride, through
the dnt-kne&s nnd silence of night, wiia. that
he did not once remonsfmle with tho Vigi-
lantes, and did not once say to them— ns lie
had been saying so often ' for two years —
"I am innocent."

He was guilty; nnd his conduct at tho
last corroborates the official record, which I
have carefully summarized and will present to
tho public in YVntsoivs Magazine for Sep-
tember.

Thnt number, road in connection with the
August issue, mnkes up tho record which
will, for all time to come, provo how Big
Money endeavored to defeat Justice in
Georgia — and met a M'ateflvo.

The Jeff ersonian, August 26, 1915

Governor John Siaton hung in effigy outside Atlanta the week

after he commuted Leo Frank's sentence, June 1915

(Georgia Department of Archives)

Long view of the lynching (wbjhma)

Frontal view of the lynching
(Joe McTyre Collection, ALphareUa, Georgia)

Ifr&fcTF

'&&*>?£?

Close-up of the lynching
(Georgia Department of Archives)

%>*<&*

F JB^lFti ■! ,? A-^

A celebration of the lynching in Marietta's town square
(Corbis)

HHHHHHP

mm THE ATLANTA' CONSTIT UTION BS

V**. XJ-VUL— Jf*. «-

ATLANTA, Dl, WKl>KBSl>AY JrtJtKttfO, AUGUST 13, Jank-TWELVK PAOEi

MlgJWN.STOR Y IN DETAIL

Section of g; g Croud Waiting eo View Frank's Body 1 How Plans Were Formed

And Put Into Execution
Without Slightest Hitch

THOUSANDS VIEW BODY

Men, Women and Children March Past Cas-
ket in Undertaking Parlors— Crowd Grows
Threatening When Refused Permission to
See Body— Remains Taken to Brooklyn at
Midnight Following Services in Chapel.

Afl*r taking bran T|*w#4fcj imrj ttiauinarti af man, wam*fi a-ml eliJiilrtii a* 'a lay
jfi 0i4 m;4j«vikJc^ p*rLapi t,t tlnwilMrg ft Bond. tin i^iy si l" M- Fr^St Li n^# *ti
roui[r> ti> UtooIIjtl, wrjir-o tin (oririrjJ tinr-rhti -wJL be Luhd. On the lum* train an
Mr*. Fraili, AkiLfcrldcr llttirrnt, her lmHler^D-linr; BililiL DATdd MATT itiif arvrr.ll
atl:'+ fekudi d! thn f.inlly.

ALlhfllSghi ll *J* rtril aitcmjitid M tiM¥*nl ibs pnlillc from «*inj[ L?in l-rkl* if 'Jm
taut iud, i hs iftrc-s'^cinjt niiiir* et tbo crriwd *Mca. gathered a> Lh« uitdarutdes
parlora hrd ti lHa dNiliLnri thai !L mHitd hi b«l tq ^ilBJl ifc.6 psbljc, uudM J>»Um JU-

Pp]L tJrtjU* Of tfa* laying of till plaf. fw Lh* rrn.jv.il nf rr.-ji fana Mll!f J-c
t|11* and Eliatr jofceufrj, cnLlTjIjaMnrl W«Jtj 4Ji«W»d TnudiJ.

STOWflF ROW MOB LYNCHED FRANK.

-Til* public will rnvir Inuo U» FitallMa rf Ht 'Ji Imrti ui lejti m*B "wIm
Utffc lain their JwH lUadi thn ez*mlW'»[ n taw tji.itll.vi been llrfp|Kd frrjEo. tiflOlty
{Juvarnur BliMn. I wauld nn-i adrlaa EnqulilLlTA iutlifniUei 6r JuSMtfrJ In- try 'J rtTcal
tfcita. The? u* 11 ualntaly lunu«f toother n™ h /id u wTwULcm, m Uiq mociebi
lh«j Jnradtd tlU "Vi!* priic n. 1 '

J TJiii irap kill- iNwnt "I ■ fHlfH ■*! Mirk Mi 4d * WjH-iL-rf Iw 1

E| Tlx lYiailrk-jluiB TLf*4»!' lltinKOfl. I Tf rfU IhHtMt^iif Ipiirt =.-i
lin r=OTTTTW=n|i. rf 4tf tj«hl»* iL>nlm_rm, aP Lkr jrrvn.1 -iri prpiEiii.-
Lbig.bl l!w|| l-tinp. l>>tn| ihrir p-jihili'ii.t ijibmi jif v(.tjikw ji M f-

RUSSIAN rORIS ISTEPSTD PROTECT
VffTH MAHV GUNS 1 P1E0FC0U0N

FALL 10 GERMANS

iii Aim Tihiru Wlicr. t?n
Hiii'i«r L ]i Traapi 3li:i'ir I
Dtfi-RlirS of Ks«n* .

IIKILY FQ* XimiANi

Nn> l3*jy««d (hf Curt
Fflraa Wilt &f« t* Ahl*
l^irold H Mlt'UlVnfa Lira ■
A^11±l ill* IriTada"-

The Allfrt WlH-tiKUft
Stapl* C4hiMli!ind and
Then SUnd U*1ilnd the

r^r;^*"M«R«siiin

£ uyjj JftiV-j A?. S)2lo<:

Dte.1a.Tfi
TKtr* Arc Condhhini
Abaut the t'rjnL Care
WWeh Cfflniiui* TrEbme-

LVNCHED.NDECAIUR

iVf-TT llrini; EJcnlsiLtd ty
Vi^ijrr^ ^i fi ,^ ll Sh^l 14
Umb Irr M^u .ii Arr..
\iir-l.i.T

HUNK LYNCHING

HtriM* (I* i

\:r::. '";.,; v.; .r '. ^, 7:. i {k, ™ r,ir,r &««*"* t t^' f =^ ^ -i * ^^ ir „< h . . r iri L d u^— «- «, Htadtrov*.

... . . . . • TT™i»:li»]i hwk'i«,l([IlM. *-.,....... ...

nrn Thtr '-fin II i iv.j— i ■>!?■ i* ■?>-<■ rtiie 11

a ^ij w Ik B um nf Mirj PVirin. i*rti[Mi all 4Jri4 ■iiilf

be ta Help Cwnrnlt*! W, \,i«l,im* «h~t oinniv fa, MtdtM fa ^rrrj Imt^rta b> (fat Ul't

I FliWT FLArtHtD

; re* ucvraB ago.

^TH-r wsakl (in-. I|i»^k^ m..# iW ■ ,=-^is * =n II um<

3 ~K4 ll^M 1 ! pM WWrlt" iHri f^-rcjitln! > "IrA." r^riiftii IFtHiil
^ HI* ■{Vd'Wid ll« fikii Hid jiJrrcJ ilvc Vflfalt Il1«i, r'KMtU.
; Ttlll m* ihr 4v »l»i Thd i.-jd:, pnlk. uirr tOHlWrJ B dH
• riqr <kP FpLlrn n ■: L'. ■■!■ t -,^yli C , i.n 1»K Iw^owl *W IIUUUil
lr.:.ii Vvkttt

'llui rpzd' llg^si irJ ffai -i)| U IT )Ufto| l[4>i hip JmdH *r-

.r;-.< ! alar-; -Hill r.'«#(i |.- ■!,,, j.;: ri ; Tn |lj U3h^[±Uit Irtlr^

pr.;!i W i famefl It [H< Urn ?:»Hk ■! LHH r)H FVSnHl

'■I ETK* I* ifl!( Ml &■■■« H^dirJ iiwii Ihr: iiinitj nf iM n«

^ h_» r; « -ju. h «jh«; ^'^'■^".r.t^pi.'Tijt

i FtM** l!>- -.fl.i:iiiKi hUlGbirj :-. . hH* iq |.„, c . , flf (araul.-
J IwtklT-n.ir intn s<1 -nil (J.It Ij,I .^1,. ,, n Ibtif jh.FK r i. T \f|f.

PHOHLMEMT MAN
DHOEVJflf AB LEADEB.

V.rtinf. . H | bd< (■ ■ ,f<H w Wiipir«ii tin, )in UlU'
Willie en hnr |.t r.PV, njlfj A |flfe|ei ««■ {NriTfl, A DU
WlW bCtll «■ ri-iiU>1f 1 nAmr j- |r4u „ . a!-' tiff liHir u j '. V T-fnl
-i' Itt irti t Sua -rit*ir1l4 m*4 pnpnfri EfUmbri. >d

ITU <Wa trtTfl«r Htc pAhtaeh i^i «^li,> .W «iti± run.

•"*■'' ii.' i .i---.it- : '•-! :• ii.- r .....:r . !r--. .;

' -*n nvn Inyil, JuafUL 4tAlliaa *r,-\ ^HfnbtA They «tri
,-i- ',iv. | ir> h"- «ftynH h 1 1 1- ii i*tt -■ triw Lb il-miqh rl |iii -[-->< l-i

rifbul i^a^Lffi.. |ifW| f« pi l^tKifc irjib LWl M^ni ah oajr «fh4,

"TH^r "">■ a-viniM-litf. xi mrt j* Jrirmln^ LS^fi Irulqrn
r '"Jilil'"^^!-. 'iKIU.rx Lbtj T.Fnld »^ ru m\m \t ^Ihuiui k r it lmFifti( tray 'iyp

The Atlanta Constitution, August 1 8, 1915

Purposely unidentified man holding
a photograph of the lynching

and an oak branch at Mary Phagan's

grave, summer 19J5

(Marietta Museum of History)

Frank's casket being removed from his parents 1 home, August 20, 1915

(Corbis)

Lucille Frank, near collapse, being escorted to the funeral
(Coibis)

■ .;■ --'..-.■- 1«s.»« '-■*■<:} V,--C^>-ro' ^Sa

- -\ gjB3

Anti-lynching editorial cartoon, Atew tor* WorW, August 18, 1915

Herbert Clay shortly before his death, summer 1923
{Courtesy Eugene Herbert Clay, Jr)

TTTObr-3

Judge Newt Morris (left) and H. N. Randolph, Mc Adoo

delegates, on a cruise of the New York harbor during the 1924

Democratic Party convention (Corbis)

Lucille Frank, circa 1950

(wujhma)

Tom Watson shortly before his death

(Southern Historical Collection, The Library of the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

William Smith/The Revenant," circa [945
(Courtesy Walter Smith)

■ ■

6-

1 a/ A V, f i

Smith's deathbed note, February 1949
(Courtesy Charley Smith)

Smith with prospective students at the Fort Smith School, circa 1946
(Courtesy Walter Smith)

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 367

From a financial standpoint, the most important Northern Jew to take up
Frank's cause in the wake of the November meeting at Temple Emanu-El
was Albert D. Lasker. The Chicago-based advertising magnate's Lord &
Thomas agency (predecessor to Foot, Cone & Belding) handled accounts
ranging from Anheuser-Busch to Goodyear tires. Exceptionally innovative
(Lasker essentially invented the idea of orange juice, which prior to his
groundbreaking campaign for Sunkist oranges was a novelty item), with a
knack for writing catchy copy ("The Grains that are shot from guns,"
boomed Lasker's slogan for Quaker Oats), Lord & Thomas was an industry
pacemaker. Its billings for 191 2 totaled $6 million.

As sole owner of the agency, the 33-year-old Lasker had built a fortune
that enabled him to commission an enormous mansion on the grounds of
Chicago's suburban Lake Shore Country Club, a center of Jewish social life.
Yet Lasker was a restless soul. He also possessed a strong sense of his
Judaic heritage. Though Texas-reared (his father was a Confederate vet-
eran), he identified with a German uncle who as a member of the Reichstag
during the nineteenth century was a vocal early opponent of the prejudicial
treatment of Jews. Noted the advertising baron's biographer: "He detested
anti-Semitism."

In late autumn, Lasker offered to do what he could to assist Frank. Qui-
etly, he contributed $1,000 and arranged for donations in equal amounts
from his father and from his close friend and fellow Lake Shore member
Julius Rosenwald, the chairman of Sears Roebuck & Company. In mid-
December, Leo Frank wrote Lasker, offering not just his gratitude but
boldly expressing his faith in the battle's ultimate outcome:

I thank you and your father, as well as Mr. Rosenwald, for the help you
have given my cause.

My attorneys and I feel confident that the Supreme Court will order a
new trial on the showing of errors committed by the court below, and that
this victory will be but the inception of a long line of successes which ulti-
mately will spell my complete and acknowledged vindication.

During this same period, Adolph Ochs, responding to the appeals of
Marshall, Lasker and Rabbi Marx— who upon making a second trip to
Manhattan got in to see the publisher— committed the New York Times
to Frank's cause. As Garet Garrett put it: "When Mr. O. returned from
Europe, the same Georgia people convinced him of Frank's innocence."
Not that Ochs was prepared to order up headlines. For all involved, there
were too many risks. However, if and when the calculus changed, he and his
great newspaper stood ready.

368 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Shortly after 9 a.m. on Monday, December 15, Reuben Arnold rose to his
feet in the state capitol chambers of the Georgia Supreme Court and initi-
ated yet another round of oral arguments. "Your honors would not believe
that such inconsequential and irrelevant evidence could be used to damn a
defendant," he told the six-judge panel, repeating the defense's assertion
that the case against Leo Frank was an unconvincing hodgepodge. Hugh
Dorsey, of course, took the opposite view, maintaining that the evidence
was strong and that the trial had been fair. Declared the solicitor: "If there
were errors, and I doubt there were, they were minor." Luther Rosser
reemphasized the contention that Jim Conley's sexually explicit testimony
was inadmissible. "The jury may have thought they were writing 'guilty of
murder,' " he roared, "but your honors, what they wrote in reality was
'guilty of perversion.' " The lawyers went on like this for the better part of
two days, but when all was said and done, they had shed little light on the
issues under consideration. "There was nothing much gained by the super-
abundance of eloquence released before the high court," observed the
Georgian's James B. Nevin. "Neither side exactly festooned itself with
glory." In part, such reviews stemmed from the fact that Arnold and the oth-
ers were talked out. More to the point, however, was an awareness that the
moment for rhetoric had passed. As Nevin noted: "The court will proceed
to its findings upon the written record and not otherwise."

The stack of documents that Georgia's Supreme Court justices— Samuel
C. Atkinson, Marcus Beck, Beverly Evans, Joseph Henry Lumpkin, M.
Warner Hill, and the chief, William D. Fish— would review in reaching their
decision included the defense's Bill of Exceptions, the state's Brief of De-
fendant in Error, and the Brief of Evidence, a 600-page digest of the trial
testimony approved by both camps.

For the most part, the Bill of Exceptions was simply a leaner version (103
instead of 115 grounds) of the amended motion. Here again were the
charges of bias against Henslee and Johenning and the allegations that the
outbursts during the trial had influenced the jury. Here again was a critique
of Dorsey's closing argument. And here again was the assault on Conley's
controversial testimony. There was, however, a critical new element, and it
not surprisingly involved Judge Roan's admission of uncertainty as to
Frank's guilt. "The words of his judgment betray on his part a mind wholly
inconsistent with the settled conviction which a trial judge ought to possess
in denying a motion for a new trial," the document averred. "From timidity
or from misapprehension as to the law," Roan had "failed to exercise that
discretion which it is his solemn duty to exercise." What he had done,

APPEALS IN AND OUT OF COURT 369

though, was to articulate his misgivings, and according to precedents in such
cases, the higher court "has repeatedly reversed the court below."

The Brief of Defendant in Error opened by taking vigorous issue with
Rosser and Arnold's thesis that Judge Roan's expression of doubt provided
sufficient reason for granting Frank a new trial. "It is not the office or func-
tion of a Bill of Exceptions to carry the views of the judge," the document
declared, citing precedents of its own. "We submit that it would be as dan-
gerous to permit a judge to impeach the integrity of his official finding after
the judgment is concluded as it would be to permit the jury, after having
been discharged, to impeach its own verdict." There followed a flurry of
similarly sharp responses to the charges of bias against Henslee and Johen-
ning, the claims that the courtroom demonstrations had influenced the jury
and the allegation that Dorsey's argument had frequently strayed out of
bounds. Trenchantly worded as these assertions were, those upholding the
admissibility of Conley's explicit testimony were more trenchant still. First,
the brief held that the Negro's charges were vital to an understanding of
Mary Phagan's murder, stating: "Our contention in this case is that Frank
was prompted to assail this girl because of his lasciviousness." And it wasn't
ordinary lasciviousness. In an effort to prove that perverse sex crimes were
the province of "a man of intelligence" (as opposed to blacks), the brief
quoted from a standard text on deviancy, Dr. Richard Von Krafft-Ebing's
Psychopathia Sexualis. To wit: "It is shown by the history of Babylon and
Nineveh and also by the mysteries of life in modern capitals that abnormal-
ity of the sexual functions proves to be frequent in civilized races."

Over Christmas and on through the first weeks of the new year, Georgia's
Supreme Court justices studied the two sides' conflicting contentions. On
January 7, Frank's lawyers submitted a Reply Brief for Plaintiff in Error
that attempted to rebut much of what the state had asserted, particularly its
claims regarding Roan's publicly stated misgivings and Conley's sexual
allegations. Though Dorsey chose not to respond to this latest salvo, the
judges reacted as well they might, postponing any ruling for a month.

During the cold, short days of Atlanta's cold, short winter, the Supreme
Court deliberated and the opposing camps waited until finally, at 1 1 a.m. on
February 17, the judges issued a 142-page decision denying Frank's appeal
by a four-to-two vote. Writing for the majority, Justice Atkinson dismissed
the charges of prejudice against Henslee and Johenning, contending that
"unless it appears there has been abuse of discretion," the matter rested
with the trial judge. Similarly, the court found that the various outbursts
punctuating the proceedings did not impugn their fairness. "The general

370 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

rule," Atkinson asserted, "is that the conduct of spectators will not be
ground for a reversal of judgment, unless a ruling upon such conduct is
invoked from the trial judge at the time it occurs." As for Conley's explicit
testimony, the majority ruled that it was "material and relevant" in that it
"tended to show a practice, plan or scheme on the part of the accused,"
adding pointedly:

From the condition of the body it might have been inferred that the per-
son who did the killing sought to have a sexual relation, natural or unnatu-
ral, with the deceased . . . Conley said that the accused said, "I ain't built
like other men." It was relevant to explain the expression above quoted to
show previous transactions of the accused, known to him and to witness,
which indicated that his conduct in sexual matters differed from that of
other men.

Which left Roan's statement of doubt. Wrote Atkinson: "This court will not
interfere because of the trial judge's oral expression as to his opinion. His
legal judgment expressed in overruling the motion will control."

The news that he had been dealt yet another setback reached Frank
shortly before noon in what had become the usual way— Rabbi Marx car-
ried it to his cell at the Tower.

In a statement relayed to the press by Marx early in the afternoon, Frank
expressed shock that his appeal had been denied. He was joined in this
reaction by Rosser and Arnold, who, though they took hope from the dis-
sent by Chief Justice Fish and Marcus Beck (the two wrote that Conley's
allegations of sexual impropriety were "calculated to prejudice the defen-
dant in the minds of the jurors and thereby deprive him of a fair trial"),
were uncertain how to proceed. Reported the Constitution: "No fixed plans
have been made by Frank's attorneys for further attack."

Meantime, Jim Conley, who was in the Tower awaiting trial as an acces-
sory after the fact to murder, told the press: "I knew how it would be, and
Mr. Frank knew it, too." Yes sir, he added, "the 'Ole Marster' up in heaven
was looking down."

FOURTEEN

gfiraess

As Leo Frank sat in his cell in the Fulton County Tower during
the first week of March 1914, he found himself often thinking of
the Swiss Alps and something that had happened to him there
while touring Europe the summer after graduating from Cornell. It was an
August morning in 1906, and Frank had made the 6,995-foot hike up Mount
Pilatus in pursuit of its view of Lake Lucerne and the surrounding country-
side. Yet no sooner had he reached the top than a storm descended, cutting
off visibility. For an anxious several hours, the earth itself appeared to have
vanished. Eventually, however, skies cleared, revealing not just the lake and
the checkerboard of fields and villages spreading out from it but a glimmer-
ing rainbow that "seemed to reach across the world." Recalling the day
from the perspective of his present circumstances, Frank saw in its move-
ment from darkness to light a metaphor for the movement beginning to
take place in his case. "My trial, my accusation, my rebuffs have been the
clouds," he told a visitor. "The developments of the past few weeks are the
rainbow of hope. And I am confident that the sun is to shine."

That less than a month after his appeal had been rejected by the Georgia
Supreme Court, Frank could envision anything other than the lengthening
shadow of the gallows attests to the fact that the intervening days had
indeed witnessed a series of astonishing occurrences— all of them favorable
to the defense.

The turnaround had started on February 20, when the Atlanta Journal
broke the news that the strands of hair discovered on a National Pencil
factory lathe during the early phases of the Phagan murder investigation
had not come from the victim's head. Even more startling, the paper also
reported that Solicitor General Hugh Dorsey had been notified of this
piece of intelligence prior to Frank's trial but had withheld it from opposing
counsel. As Dr. Henry F Harris, who had microscopically compared the
hair found at the plant with samples taken during his autopsies of little
Mary's body, told the Journal's Harllee Branch: "When I informed the solic-
itor that the two specimens of hair were not the same he simply remarked
that he would let the matter end there." These revelations prompted an
instantaneous reaction from Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold, who in a

37 2 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

joint statement accused Dorsey of prosecutorial misconduct. "He knew the
truth and in spite of his knowledge urged upon the jury that this hair was
evidence of Frank's guilt," the lawyers charged, adding: "The solicitor, in
his zeal, misconceived his duty." Clearly caught out, Dorsey had tried to
limit the damage, contending that Harris was merely offering an "opinion."
Moreover, he asserted that the doctor's assessment notwithstanding, "the
state's case had lost none of its strength, since it was not on such trifles that
it was based," the hair being just "another addition to the mass of cumula-
tive evidence against the defendant."

Hard upon the Journal's exposure of Harris's finding, Frank's lawyers—
revealing that they had long been awaiting such an opportunity —released a
barrage of headline-making retractions by individuals heretofore firmly
aligned with the state. The first of the disavowals to hit the papers came from
Albert McKnight, the husband of Leo and Lucille's Negro cook, Minola,
who now swore that his trial testimony had been fabricated. In a notarized
affidavit made for C. W. Burke, a private detective working for Rosser, Mc-
Knight declared that at the behest of his employers at Beck & Gregg Hard-
ware—who like so many others had been angling for the rewards offered in
the slaying's aftermath— he had concocted his tale regarding Frank's failure
to eat lunch the day of the crime and subsequent hasty departure from
home. The truth, he warranted, was that he "did not see Mr. Leo M. Frank at
any time or place on Saturday, April 26, 1913." At last, McKnight had con-
ceded what his wife had maintained both before and after being jailed by
Dorsey, in the process casting renewed doubt on the prosecution's theories
regarding Frank's activities the afternoon of the murder.

The defense also made public an affidavit by erstwhile madam Nina
Formby renouncing her damaging May 1913 deposition to the Atlanta
police alleging that Frank was not only a patron of her establishment but
had called on the day of the killing seeking a room in which to deposit Mary
Phagan's body. Quite to the contrary, Formby announced, "Leo M. Frank
had never been to my house. There had been no telephone conversation
between Mr. Leo M. Frank and me." She said she had been coerced into
swearing falsely by Detectives W. T Chewning and J. N Norris. Though
Formby was, of course, regarded as an untrustworthy character— which was
why Dorsey had kept her off the stand in August— her about-face resur-
rected misgivings regarding the methods investigators had used in collect-
ing other allegations. As Frank himself would soon ask reporters: "If they
were at such pains to make out a slanderous charge to turn opinion against
me, is it not reasonable to assume that they would go even further in fram-
ing up evidence for use in the trial?"

Rosser and Arnold next unveiled a sweeping recantation by the loqua-
cious bratling who had introduced the issue of sex into the case. In a 3,500-

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 373

word affidavit, George Epps proclaimed: "I now state that at both the coro-
ner's inquest and the trial of Leo Frank I swore falsely. I now state that I was
persuaded to give the false testimony in both of the before-mentioned hear-
ings by Detective John Black. He told me, 'You go ahead and tell it just like
I tell it.' " Bluntly put, Epps was accusing headquarters' lead investigator of
not only having directed him to commit perjury but of having invented the
charge that little Mary, in response to Frank's advances, had sought his pro-
tection. And if that weren't enough, there was this: Following the inquest,
Epps said he had tried to inform Dorsey that his story was untrue. Yet the
solicitor, he maintained, cut him off, snapping: "Just stick to that." For nearly
a year, the boy added, he'd been a good soldier, although he'd felt "sorry"
and was "glad of the chance to explain it and relieve my mind." Splashed
atop Atlanta's front pages (testimony doctored by black, boomed the
Georgian), Epps's unexpected change of tune knocked the wind out of
Dorsey. After denying that his young witness ever gave him reason to think
he was lying, the solicitor declined further comment.

With the publication of George Epps's retraction, the state had suffered
another severe blow— the fourth in two weeks. Little wonder that Leo
Frank's spirits were rising. Yet the apparent crumbling of evidence ex-
plained only part of it. The news from outside Atlanta during this brief
period had given the condemned man even more reason to take heart.

The headline atop page three of the February 18 editions of the New
York Times could not have been more judicious: split court denies new
trial to frank. However, the four columns of underlying text, which
opened with the story's subject professing his innocence and then provided
a summary of the case thus far, sent an unmistakable signal. As Adolph S.
Ochs's confidant Garet Garrett noted in his diary, the publisher had at last
"committed the Times to a campaign of righteous publicity."

"Crusade" might have been a better word for it. In the following days,
the Times gave front-page treatment to every significant development in
the story, evidence for frank hidden, say counsel, declared the
above-the-fold topper on February 21. retracts evidence that doomed
frank, pronounced another on February 23. woman admits she lied
about frank, proclaimed still another on February 26. And on and on
until by March 6 (the date the condemned man's account of his experience
on Mount Pilatus appeared), the paper had run 25 articles on the case (nine
on page one), elevating what had been a drama little known beyond Geor-
gia's borders into a topic of national import.

The Times's initial coverage had also spelled out what the country
should think about the Frank affair. Though the paper dutifully reported
much of the state's evidence, its pieces by and large read as if they'd origi-
nated from within the defense camp. Which, in many instances, they had.

374 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

On several occasions during this period, Ochs essentially turned over his
news columns to Frank's lawyers, printing lengthy interviews unmediated
by any skepticism and unencumbered by a word from the other side.

On March 2, beneath the front-page headline frank convicted by
public clamor, the Times provided Herbert Haas free rein to recapitulate
the entire affair from Frank's point of view The lawyer, who by this junc-
ture had assumed control of the defense's fund-raising efforts and was in
New York staying, at the Knickerbocker Hotel, took full advantage of the
moment. After lambasting the Atlanta police for the manner in which they
had conducted the investigation and scoring Dorsey for the way in which he
had run the prosecution, he dismissed his client's chief accuser. "Conley had
been arrested seven times between 1904 and 1912 for disorderly conduct.
Fifty or sixty employees of the factory testified that they would not believe
him under oath." Then he declared: "Frank's friends are absolutely con-
vinced of his innocence. That he is the victim of a vile conspiracy, and that
he is a man of the highest integrity and character, and that his innocence
will ultimately be proved to the world there is not the slightest doubt."

On March 4, the Times accorded Luther Rosser— who it so happened
was also in New York, conferring, as he phrased it, "with certain persons
who are interested in the Frank case"— the same privilege it had given
Haas. And like his counterpart, Rosser lit into the police and Dorsey before
roughing up their star witness. "As for Conley, it would have been impossi-
ble to pick out a negro lower in the social scale." Then the condemned man's
lead counsel— responding to the question "Why was Frank convicted?"—
articulated what for most Americans would become the defining issue:

The Jewish population of Atlanta is not large. Frank came to Atlanta a
stranger and engaged in a new enterprise. He knew hardly anybody who
was not of his own religion, being closely occupied with his business, and
this fact rather counted against him. I really believe if Frank had been the
son of a reputable Gentile, he would never have been arrested.

The New York Times's entry into the fray had, of course, galvanized the
defense. Adolph Ochs was in the fight for the duration. But for all of that, it
was another northern Jew's decision to take up the cause in earnest that
had produced the greatest elation, convincing Leo Frank that exoneration
would indeed be his.

Sometime around the first of March, the Chicago advertising magnate
Albert D. Lasker had stepped off a train at Atlanta's Terminal Station.
Owing to an innate abhorrence of personal notoriety and an awareness of
the need, in this instance, for discretion, Lasker had insisted that no one
except those connected with the defense be told he was coming. The news-

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 375

papers never mentioned he was in town. His presence, however, made itself
immediately felt when on March 4, the renowned private detective William
Burns— the same Burns whose agency had briefly taken up the inves-
tigation nearly a year before— arrived at Terminal Station and to a mob
of reporters and photographers declared: "I am in the Frank case to the
finish." Predictably, Burns's announcement set off a frenzy in the press.
Roared the Georgian's front-page headline: detective promises deci-
sive probe. And just as predictably, Lasker kept his name out of print, cir-
culating the story that the condemned man's friends Milton Klein and Dr.
Benjamin Wildauer had hired Burns. But the truth was that Lasker had
engaged the investigator and paid his $4,500 retainer, and for the next
week, Lasker, according to an associate, would "work day and night direct-
ing detectives and securing affidavits" on Frank's behalf.

From the defense's perspective, Lasker's appearance in Atlanta was an
answered prayer— and not just because he had agreed to provide the fund-
ing for Burns. He had also agreed to put the same promotional genius that
had made Quaker oats and Budweiser beer household names to use in con-
vincing the public of Frank's innocence. If ever there was a time such savvy
might matter, it was now, for as was becoming clear, the defense was prepar-
ing to launch a war to overturn the condemned man's conviction. The pri-
mary legal weapon: an extraordinary motion for a new trial. Though there
could be no doubting the intensity with which the state would contest the
motion, Lasker expected victory. As an aide to the Sears, Roebuck chair-
man Julius Rosenwald— who had, of course, donated money to the effort
months before— put it in an early-March update: "Mr. Lasker's secretary,
Miss Langan, told me, in a guarded way, that Mr. Lasker was very hopeful of
a satisfactory outcome."

These, then, were the events that had convinced Leo Frank that though his
dilemma remained unchanged, everything was different. Never was the
alteration in mood more apparent than on the morning of March 7, when
the condemned man emerged from the Tower to attend what by every right
should have been a sobering proceeding.

The setting was the Thrower Building courtroom of Judge Benjamin H.
Hill. Here, Hugh Dorsey would ask the lower court, which was now in
receipt of the mandate from the Supreme Court returning the case to its
jurisdiction, to set a new execution date. Yet from the moment that Frank—
tan mackintosh draped over his shoulders, derby in hand— strode into the
crowded chamber, the defense's fresh-minted optimism filled the air. For
one thing, Reuben Arnold, exhibiting the certainty he and Rosser shared
regarding the extraordinary motion's prospects, announced that he would

376 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

forgo the de rigueur but usually futile request for clemency. More telling
was what occurred once the preliminary business was done and Hill
inquired if any other issues remained to be addressed. At this, Arnold said
simply that his client wished to make a statement, whereupon the judge
nodded his assent.

Approaching the bench, Frank began by diplomatically asking Hill not
to take his remarks personally. "I well know," he said, "that your honor has
naught to do with the vicissitudes of my case." Then, with a confidence and
verve that suggested he intended to use the forum to make what amounted
to the opening argument in his battle for a new trial, the condemned man
declared:

Law, as we know it, your honor, is but the expression of man's legal
experience. It is but relative. It tries to approximate justice, but being man-
made is fallible. In the name of the law many grievous errors have been
committed— errors that were colossal and irretrievable. I declare to your
honor that the state of Georgia is about to make such an error.

From this philosophical start, Frank turned to the specifics of his own
dilemma. Arms raised, voice gaining in strength, he asserted:

Your honor, an astounding and outrageous state of affairs obtained
previous to and during my trial. On the streets rumor and gossip carried
vile, vicious and damning stories concerning me and my wife. These
stories were absolutely false and did me great harm as they beclouded and
obsessed the public mind and outraged it against me.

From a public in this state of mind, the jury that tried me was chosen.
Not alone were these stories circulated on the street, but to the shame of
our community, be it said, these vile insinuations crept into my very trial.

The virus of these damning insinuations entered the minds of the twelve
men and stole away their judicial frame of mind and their moral courage.
The issue at bar was lost. The poison of the unspeakable things took its
place.

With that, Frank squared his shoulders and in a tone at once resolute and
resigned proclaimed:

If the state and the law will that my life be taken as a blood atonement
for the poor little child who was ruthlessly killed by another, then it
remains for me only to die with whatever fortitude my manhood may
allow.

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 377

But I am innocent of this crime. And the future will prove it.
I am now ready for your honor's sentence.

The unexpected eloquence of Frank's statement so jolted those in the
courtroom that initially Hill seemed at a loss on how to continue. But after
a moment's hesitation, the judge picked up a document headed "State of
Georgia versus Leo M. Frank, No. 9410" and began to read aloud:

It appears that the defendant, Leo M. Frank, was on August 26, 1913,
convicted of murder and thereupon duly sentenced by the order of this
court to the punishment of death.

It is here and now ordered and adjudged that the sheriff of Fulton
County be, and he is hereby, commanded to do execution of such sentence
aforesaid on the 17th day of April, 1914.

"That is my birthday," Frank whispered upon hearing the date he would
turn thirty so designated. But otherwise, he seemed undismayed. This was
an individual previously all but unknown to Atlantans. Never again would
he be called "The Silent Man in the Tower."

From this moment on, Leo Frank would speak regularly to local reporters
while flooding national newspapers with written statements. Regarding the
zeal with which Dorsey had tried him, he told the Georgian: "It is a terrible
thing to suggest that a public official would advance his prestige at the
expense of an innocent man's neck. And yet you can see how it is. There is
not much glory in convicting a negro of a sensational crime." Pointing to a
detail that he believed exonerated him, he informed the Constitution: "If I
had been guilty, nothing on earth would have induced me to have revealed
the fact that I had seen and talked with Mary Phagan in my office a few sec-
onds before the prosecution claims I killed her. Would the man who killed
Mary Phagan have freely and voluntarily stated that he saw her and talked
with her just a few moments before she was supposed to have been killed?"
And as for Conley, he told the Journal: "I am obliged to leave it to the intel-
ligence and fair-mindedness of the community whether his successive per-
juries, his motive to lie, the most powerful motive that could actuate a
human being, and the utter improbability of his story does not render it
unworthy of belief."

Coordinating these sallies was Albert Lasker, who covered the costs of
circularizing Frank's remarks outside Atlanta as well as endorsed the slo-
gan that soon tied them together: "The Truth Is on the March." After trying

378 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

the line out as a tag for his written pronouncements, the condemned man
began slipping it into interviews, and soon enough, not only was he using it
much as advertisers used the catchphrases Lasker created for them, so were
partisans elsewhere. A rallying cry had been born. And what made the cry
effective was that circumstances continued to go Frank's way.

Frank's lawyers chose this juncture to unleash another flurry of news-
worthy affidavits. The first came from young Helen Ferguson. In a statement
made for C. W. Burke, the factory worker asserted that on the Saturday prior
to Mary Phagan's murder, Jim Conley had accosted her in the plant lobby—
the spot where Rosser and Arnold maintained the crime had occurred. "He
was drunk— seemingly as drunk as could be," she swore. "I saw a whisky bot-
tle in his hip pocket. He was staggering. His eyes looked queer and he didn't
seem to know what he was doing. Then he came over toward me menacingly
and I drew back, and as he pushed nearer me, I jumped to the stairs and ran
as fast as I could." Though the Ferguson girl stood by her trial testimony
alleging that Frank had thwarted her effort to pick up little Mary's pay the
afternoon before the killing, the press played her declaration as a defense
victory. Proclaimed the New York Times's page-one headline: says conley

MOLESTED HER.

No sooner had the Ferguson triumph hit the newspapers than Frank's
lawyers released a pair of affidavits that Leonard Haas maintained would
form "the strongest connecting links" in the extraordinary motion. As Ethel
Harris Miller and Maier Lefkoff — both familiar figures in Atlanta's Jewish
community but neither previously involved in the case— told it, they were
walking down Whitehall Street around 1:10 the afternoon of the murder
when Mrs. Miller saw Frank. "I spoke to him," she swore, "and Mr. Frank
bowed and spoke to me, tipping his hat." The claim bolstered the superin-
tendent's alibi. Hence Haas's enthusiasm. "The statements of Mrs. Miller
and Mr. Lefkoff prove that Frank was not at the factory at the time the
Conley negro states positively that they were disposing of the body," he
declared. To this assessment, Frank happily concurred, telling reporters that
he remembered meeting Mrs. Miller that April day, then adding: "The truth
continues on the march."

Just how determined the defense was to establish its version of the truth
became clear during the second week of March when a glossy eight-page
pamphlet entitled "Some Facts about the Murder Notes in the Phagan
Case" started appearing in the mailboxes of Atlanta's registered voters.
Penned by the lawyer, Henry A. Alexander, who had recently been added
to the defense team by Albert Lasker, the pamphlet —which was illustrated
with crisply printed photographs of the documents under consideration—
constituted the opening salvo in a two-prong attack intended to prove that
not only did the contents of the enigmatic notes point to Jim Conley as their

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 379

author and therefore little Mary's slayer, so did the very paper upon which
they were written.

The murder notes had until now received scant critical attention. Save for
Hugh Dorsey's assertions during his closing argument at Frank's trial that
the proper usage of the word "did" in the notes indicated that a white man
had composed them, and Arnold's comments to the contrary during the
appeal, their strange syntax and lexicon had gone unaddressed. Alexander's
study began to change all that. The lawyer had grown up with Southern
blacks and was a student of their expressions and folklore. He had read and
reread the notes, eventually focusing on a distinctive locution that appeared
near the top of the one jotted on lined white paper: "he said he wood love
me land down play like the night witch did it." To Alexander's thinking, the
term "night witch" had been misunderstood from the start, when just after
Mary Phagan's body was discovered, the responding officers had read the
notes aloud to Newt Lee, who according to the police had replied, "Boss,
that's me." Out of that exchange, the lawyer believed, had arisen the erro-
neous conclusion that the communiques had been intended to implicate the
night watchman— a purpose later easy to impute to Frank— when in fact, as
he saw it, they had been intended to point in an altogether different direc-
tion. Alexander argued that the notes did not refer to Lee at all; they
referred instead exactly to the figure named— "the night witch," a wispy
hoodoo haint. "It seems to the writer of this article," Alexander contends in
his pamphlet's key passage, "that in this expression there is disclosed a piece
of superstition characteristic of the negro, and totally foreign to a white
man. The idea that the girl was killed by a night witch, or, as the note
expresses it, that the iong tall black negro' would 'play like the night witch
did it' is inconceivable as the thought of a white man."

Alexander's provocative interpretation struck a chord with many Atlan-
tans. (A local pastor later wrote: "We had an old Negro woman working for
us as cook and I asked her one day, 'Rebecca, what do colored people mean
by night witch?' She replied, 'When children cry out in their sleep at night it
means the night witches are riding them, and if you don't go and wake them
up, they will be found dead the next morning.' ") Yet persuasive as the
lawyer was on the matter, his reasoning was in the end theoretical. Which
was why what came next was crucial, for it was not theoretical in the least.

NEW EVIDENCE TO SHOW NOTES WERE WRITTEN IN THE BASEMENT,

boomed the front-page headline over the Journal's account of the second
phase of Alexander's work, which he presented to reporters in person.
After scrutinizing his pamphlet's high-quality reproductions and instigating
a subsequent probe of factory records, the lawyer announced he had deter-
mined that the yellow preprinted National Pencil Company order sheet
upon which the longest of the notes was inscribed not only bore the tracings

380 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

of a purchase order issued years before Mary Phagan's death but that the
order had been made out by a mechanic who'd quit his job in 1912 and
whose files had been carted to the cellar. Elaborating on the basis for these
conclusions, Alexander cited several newly legible details. For one, in the

space marked "Order No. " appeared a smudgy "1018," which further

investigation had revealed corresponded with the number for a purchase of
machine steel made from the Cotton States Belting Company in September
1909. For another, across the bottom of the sheet could be seen the impress
of a partial signature belonging to Henry F Becker, the former employee
who had tendered the order. Alexander also asserted that the sheet upon
which this note was written contained another telltale clue, which had
always been apparent but had gone unappreciated. To wit: The dateline in

the upper right-hand corner read "190 ," whereas the printed sheets in use

at the time of the crime had been updated to read "191 ."Taken together,

the lawyer concluded, these physical facts gave the lie to that part of Con-
ley's testimony in which he claimed that the paper upon which he'd jotted
the notes came from a pad kept in Frank's desk. What, then, had occurred?
"The simplest explanation and the one which seems correct from every log-
ical viewpoint," declared Alexander, was that the pad— like everything
belonging to Becker— "was taken to the basement," remaining there until
April 26, 1913, when "it was found by the negro and used by him to write
the note through which he hoped to throw the blame on another."

Alexander's contentions regarding the murder-note paper produced
euphoria in the defense camp. And as was now his wont, Frank immediately
made himself available to reporters, proclaiming: "They will have to change
Conley's statement again if they are to get around this. They will have to get
him to say that instead of reaching in my desk and getting out a pad, I went
down into the basement and brought that old pad up that bore Becker's
duplicates and had him write on that." Then, more soberly, the condemned
man elaborated upon Alexander's conclusions, averring that "none of
Becker's old duplicate pads was ever in my office." Yet in the end, Frank
could not suppress his glee. "I hope Solicitor Dorsey rests as easily in his
bed tonight and sleeps as soundly and as free from worry as I shall. I have
never felt more confident of ultimate acquittal than I do right at this
moment."

How the defense could at this stage have been any better positioned
would have been hard to imagine, but even as Frank was rejoicing over
Alexander's deductions, a meeting was under way across town at the
Atlanta Journal whose outcome would provide a still greater boost. The ses-
sion, which took place in the office of the paper's editor and publisher,
James R. Gray, had been requested by Harllee Branch. The reporter had

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 381

been on the Phagan story since long before breaking the news regarding
Dr. Harris and the misrepresented hair evidence, not only covering the trial
but in tandem with Harold Ross conducting the May 1913 interview with
Conley that prompted Hugh Dorsey to quarantine his star witness. During
this protracted involvement, Branch had reached several disturbing conclu-
sions, foremost among them that the jury had convicted an innocent man.
He had also decided that, like everyone who had written about the case, he
had failed to exercise sufficient restraint and was hence partially culpable in
the result. "I had a feeling of personal responsibility," Branch would recall
half a century later. "We'd printed all this stuff." Which was what drove him
to seek out his boss. "I thought it was my duty to go and call Mr. Gray's
attention to this," he said. "I knew it was unusual for a newspaper to step in
while a motion was pending, but I thought that we— somebody— should
come out for what was right, fair and just and demand this man have a new
trial. Mr. Gray listened to me patiently and interestedly, and then he said,
'Harllee, let me think over that tonight.' He indicated to me that he himself
had misgivings, that we'd muffed the ball."

By the next day, Gray— whose paper was represented, of course, by
Reuben Arnold— had made up his mind. "He told me," said Branch, "he'd
thought it over, came to the conclusion I was correct, and regardless of the
effect on the Journal the Journal was going to come out for a new trial."

On March 10, beneath the headline "Frank Should Have a New Trial,"
the sheet that Covered Dixie Like the Dew lent its voice to the con-
demned man's cause. The Journal's position was essentially this: The mur-
der of Mary Phagan— "a young girl just budding into womanhood"— had
so unhinged Atlanta that for the better part of a year, its populace lost the
ability to think clearly. "A degree of frenzy almost inconceivable" had led
the city to demand a scapegoat, and when Conley— "an irresponsible
drunken negro, a man who would not have been believed under other con-
ditions"— offered up Frank, the public suspended disbelief. By the time
judicial proceedings began, the "fury" was such that an unbiased adminis-
tration of justice was impossible. Lest his readers doubt this claim, Gray
recreated the scene:

The atmosphere of the courtroom was charged with an electric current
of indignation which flashed before the very eyes of the jury. The court-
room and streets were filled with an angry crowd ready to seize the defen-
dant if the jury had found him not guilty. Cheers for the prosecuting
counsel were irrepressible in the courtroom throughout the trial and on
the streets demonstrations in condemnation of Frank were heard by the
judge and jury.

382 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Frank's execution, after conviction under such "indescribable conditions as
these," would, the editor argued, "amount to judicial murder." As a conse-
quence, there was only one right course of action:

In the name of Justice and in the name of the good people of the State
of Georgia, who believe in fair play, who stand for the enforcement of law
and the punishment of crime, after legal conviction, let this man be fairly
tried. If he is guilty, he will be convicted again.

The publication of the Journal's editorial sparked a far greater reaction
than Branch or Gray could have anticipated, emboldening people who
might otherwise have remained on the sidelines to enter the fight. In the
days immediately afterward, letters voicing support for Frank poured in
by the scores. Predictably, most of them came from Atlanta patricians.
F J. Paxon, the proprietor of the city's second largest department store,
Davison-Paxon, leaped to the ramparts. As did Forrest Adair, a real estate
developer. As did Eugene Muse Mitchell, a well-to-do lawyer whose preco-
cious 13-year-old daughter Margaret was already writing stories about gal-
lant knights and beautiful ladies that anticipated her novel Gone with the
Wind. Yet it wasn't just the rich who spoke out. The following Sunday, many
members of Atlanta's clergy followed suit. The Reverend L. O. Bricker, pas-
tor of the First Christian Church, declared: "Frank should have a new trial
because under the awful tension of public feeling, it was next to impossible
for a jury of our fellow human beings to have granted him a fair, fearless and
impartial trial." The Reverend Julian S. Rodgers, a Baptist, sought to quiet
any still-stirring anti-Semitic sentiments, admonishing his congregation:

The fact that Frank is a Jew should not discredit him. His race is the mir-
acle of the ages. It stands out conspicuously for patience, forbearance and
obedience to law. If Leo Frank is a criminal, it is not because he is a Jew, but
in spite of it.

The Journal's editorial was, quite simply, a call to arms, and by the next
week, other Georgia papers— among them the Albany Herald, the Dalton
Citizen and the Thomasville Times-Enterprise— h&d demanded a new trial
for Frank, too. From afar, the New York Times breathed a sigh of relief:

Even among the people of the City of Atlanta, the feeling in regard to
Frank, convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan, has undergone a marked
change. The belief grows and daily spreads that Frank was not convicted on
the evidence, that he is a victim of the clamor and rage of an excited public.

The light, as Frank himself again declared, truly did seem to be breaking.

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 383

The first indication that the skies might once again darken for Leo Frank
came, as had so much in this saga, in the form of a newspaper headline. "The
Frank Case: When and Where Shall Rich Criminals Be Tried?" thundered
the banner stripped across the front page of the March 19 edition of the Jef-
fersonian. After nearly eleven months of silence, the weekly organ of the
populist firebrand Thomas Watson had joined the battle, its entry an unin-
tended consequence of the Atlanta Journals alliance with the condemned
man. As Watson declared in his opening blast:

For many years, I have not taken the Atlanta Journal, nor have I read
it. Recognized by everybody as the organ of Senator [Hoke] Smith and
edited with the most utter disregard for truth and liberality, I have not
cared to pay any attention to it.

Last week, however, there came to my address a blue-marked wrapper
enclosing the Journal; and the leading editorial was blue-marked also. As I
got a copy, it is reasonable to suppose that everybody got a copy, just as
everybody gets copies of Senator Smith's senatorial utterances— the same
being equivalent to oracles from the fountain-head of Wisdom.

The marked editorial in Senator Smith's newspaper bears the modest
headline, "FRANK SHOULD HAVE A NEW TRIAL!"

The case is still pending; Judge Ben Hill knows that he will soon have to
pass upon an extraordinary motion for a new trial; hence, Judge Ben Hill
is peremptorily, abruptly and insolently told by Senator Smith what he
must do.

The effort on the part of Senator Smith's newspaper to degrade our
Supreme Court, vilify Judge Roan, brand twelve jurors with eternal infamy,
blast the future of a thoroughly brave and efficient Solicitor General AND
TO DICTATE IN ADVANCE TO JUDGE BEN HILL moves me to
enter a protest against what seems to me a new and lawless method of try-
ing a criminal case.

Had the Sage confined himself to the merits of the Journals position, his
remarks might have been viewed as simply the comments of a fiercely
opposing sensibility. But as his many references to Hoke Smith suggest, he
was acting out of a deep-seated personal animus that found its roots in an
incident that had occurred nearly a decade before and had nothing to do
with Frank's pending motion. In 1907, Watson had gone to then governor
Smith and requested a pardon for one Arthur Glover, a longtime loyalist
under sentence of death for the murder of a female factory worker outside
an Augusta textile mill. Since his support of Smith in the 1906 election had

384 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

essentially put him in office, Watson viewed executive clemency for Glover
as the payment of a political debt. The state's evidence, however, was solid,
and Smith allowed the execution to proceed. Ever since this "betrayal," C.
Vann Woodward would observe in his biography, Tom Watson: Agrarian
Rebel, Watson's "desire to bring disgrace upon Hoke Smith [had] become a
blinding obsession." In 1908, it led him to back Marietta's Joseph Brown in
his victorious gubernatorial campaign against Smith, and now it was again
the primary motivating factor. If the Journal was for Frank, then the Jeffer-
sonian would be against him, and as Watson proceeded to make clear,
he would relish the fight. Indeed, the stark juxtaposition the Frank case
presented between rich and poor, capital and labor, meddling Yankee
and native Southerner seemed tailor-made for him. Regarding the just
instigated high-profile campaign to save the condemned man, Watson point-
edly asked, "Who is paying for all this?" Then, taking a potshot at the
clergymen who had jumped on the bandwagon, he demanded:

Does the church invade the province of the State when preachers of a
certain sort prostitute their sacred office and attempt to try criminal cases
in their churches'?

Finally, he raised what he saw as the tacit assumption behind the effort to
win Frank a new trial, inquiring:

Does a Jew expect extraordinary favors and immunities because of his
race?

In this case, the defendant is taking that position. Anyone who has
noticed the New York papers has noticed the persistent efforts made from
Atlanta to arouse the Hebrews into believing that Frank is a victim of race
prejudice.

Is it wise for the Jews to risk the good name and the popularity of the
whole race in the extraordinary, extra-judicial and utterly unprecedented
methods that are being worked to save this decadent offshoot of a great
people?

Few foes were more formidable than Tom Watson. Equally worrisome,
however, was the reappearance of another adversary— Hugh Dorsey. Hav-
ing recovered from the setbacks of late winter, the solicitor was aggres-
sively preparing for the approaching confrontation in court. Day and night,
such prosecution stalwarts as Chief of Detectives Newport Lanford and
John Black, Pat Campbell and John Starnes came and went from Dorsey's
office, and soon enough, the broad outlines of what the solicitor had in mind
emerged. For starters, he made it plain that he meant to challenge at least

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 385

some of the many retractors, releasing an affidavit in which George Epps's
father swore that his son had told him Mary Phagan was terrified of Frank.
Second, he let it be known that he planned to contest a point that most
thought he'd conceded— Dr. Harris's finding that the hair discovered on the
factory lathe did not come from Mary's head. The solicitor revealed this
intention in what for him was a perfect venue— the trial of Jim Conley on
the charge of being an accessory after the fact to murder. Dorsey did not
relish prosecuting a man who'd done so much for him. As he declared up
front: "Conley had nothing to do with [the crime]. He was just Frank's fool
and ought not to be punished." Dorsey did relish, though, the chance the
proceeding gave him to get into the record testimony he could cite during
the upcoming hearing. Hence in accordance with an agreement made in
advance with Conley's lawyer, William Smith, the solicitor called only one
witness, Will Gheesling, the undertaker who'd prepared Mary Phagan's
body for burial. In response to a series of questions that had no bearing on
Conley's case, Gheesling stated that on the morning after the murder, he'd
washed little Mary's blood-matted scalp with a pine-tar soap that could
have so altered her hair's texture and color as to destroy any similarity
between it and the strands located by R. P. Barrett. Having thereby armed
himself with a sworn statement that called Harris's assertion into doubt,
Dorsey detailed the evidence against Conley, concluding: "If the law didn't
demand his conviction, I would say let him go." In response, Smith argued
that since Conley had been recruited merely to stand guard, "the only way
[he] was an accessory was in that he helped Frank in furthering his sexual
desires"— which was hardly illegal. Nonetheless, after just twelve minutes
of deliberation, the jury found the Negro guilty. Yet once the verdict was
returned, Judge Ben Hill imposed the lenient sentence of one year on the
chain gang. There was, in short, but a single loser here— Leo Frank.

To say that William Burns's involvement in the Frank case allayed the
defense team's concerns regarding Tom Watson and Hugh Dorsey would
be an overstatement. Yet the detective's reputation was such that his mere
presence in Atlanta— a presence that due to unfinished business in the
North did not become permanent until the third week of March— outshone
everything the Sage and the solicitor said or did. Just the sight of Burns set-
tling down to breakfast each morning in the fern-filled pink-and-white din-
ing room of the grand Georgian Terrace Hotel suggested that a higher
power was now at work. Surrounded by half a dozen reporters, attended by
a traveling secretary and assorted subalterns, and invariably clad in a crisp
houndstooth suit that set off his famous red hair and mustache, the detec-
tive exuded energy and confidence. This was America's greatest private

386 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

investigator, and between bites of his soft-boiled eggs and toast, he would
regale the table with war stories, pausing only to dictate telegrams to clients
and operatives in far-flung climes. Then, with the entire retinue in tow, he
would stroll down Peachtree Street to his agency's local office, declaiming
not just on aspects of the Phagan murder but on his certainty that he would
solve it. "I have no doubt concerning the ability of myself and that of my
associates to clear up this affair," Burns exuded on one of the first of these
outings. "I have been able to clear up far more baffling mysteries."

Brash, boastful, at times bedazzling, Burns was also aware that as far as
the Frank case was concerned, none of it would get him very far unless he
simultaneously conveyed the impression that he sought the cooperation of
the Atlanta Police Department and possessed an open mind regarding the
possibility of his client's guilt. Early on, he declared: "I know the people of
this community were justly incensed over this atrocious murder in their
midst. The officials charged with the duty of bringing to justice the person
or persons responsible for the crime are to be commended for the rigorous
manner in which they took up the investigation." As for his own investiga-
tion, he vowed that he would "strike to the heart of the truth no matter who
it affects," adding that if in the course of his operation he found that Frank
was the murderer, he would say so.

While it's unlikely that Newport Lanford and company put any more
stock in Burns's professions of evenhandedness than Burns did, they
responded in kind. Proclaimed Lanford: "I will throw open to Burns all
information available to my department." As a consequence, the private
investigator began work in an atmosphere that on the surface was con-
ducive to progress. He devoted his first days in Atlanta to poring over the
Brief of Evidence used during the appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court
and meeting with Luther Rosser, Herbert and Leonard Haas, Detective
C. W. Burke (who would hereafter report to him) and, most extensively,
Leo Frank. Following this opening round of discussions, he visited the
pencil factory, where, as the Journal put it, he examined the crime scene
from the ground up, starting in the basement and finishing on the second
floor, paying special attention to Frank's office and the metal room. Then
he announced plans to interview everyone from John Starnes and Hugh
Dorsey to Monteen Stover and Jim Conley.

By the middle of his initial week on the job, Burns had grown even more
optimistic about his prospects for success. "This case," he told the Georgian,
"is easier than I expected. The facts will speak for themselves when made
public. I am confident that Mr. Dorsey is open to conviction if it should
develop that a grievous mistake has been made." Having thereby tipped
his hand, the detective immediately backtracked, insisting: "I have never

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 387

expressed any conviction as to the innocence or guilt of Frank and do not
intend to do so until the investigation is completed." But as to the larger
issue, he remained resolute. "The trail certainly looks clear enough to me,
and I believe Atlanta and the country at large will be satisfied that the truth
has been found when the final report is made."

Just what Burns had uncovered that enabled him to speak with such
assuredness, he would not say. He did, however, offer a tantalizing clue.
Like Dorsey and Lanford, he had determined that Mary Phagan's mur-
derer had been motivated by an unnatural lust. But unlike the authorities,
he did not believe that Leo Frank was so inclined. "In my work," the detec-
tive told the Journal, "I have had occasion to come in contact with abnor-
mal people of all kinds, and I know them and their characteristics well.
Many perverts occupy high places in society and in business. It is not a diffi-
cult matter for me to locate one. Abnormality has its unfailing marks. Frank
is a normal man. I am satisfied of this fact."

The implications here were lost on no one. Burns was convinced he could
do what the defense had failed to do at the trial— prove Frank's innocence
by establishing his morality. More than that, he was convinced he could
prove the killer's identity by establishing his immorality. He was not,
though, ready to reveal the basis for his thinking. Most particularly, he was
unwilling to discuss whether he'd developed fresh information that bore on
Jim Conley's sexual predilections. When a Constitution reporter endeav-
ored to smoke him out by asking whether the crime was committed by
someone of "savage instinct and nature"— by, in other words, a Negro— all
the man received was a noncommittal smile.

With a combination of bravado and guile, then, Burns had comman-
deered the investigation's center stage. Atop front pages in Atlanta and New
York, headlines proclaimed his imminent triumph, burns is certain after
week's work he will clear phagan mystery, boomed the Georgian.
burns says he can solve the frank case, echoed the Times. Meanwhile,
other national papers also took note. Blared the Chicago Tribune: "Detec-
tive Burns Says He Soon Can Prove Who Was Slayer of Mary Phagan."There
would be, however, no quick solution, for following only eight days on the
ground, Burns departed for the North to pursue unspecified new leads. Until
his return, he would be represented in Atlanta by two legendary operatives.
A polished swell known for working incognito, Guy Biddinger had pulled off
Burns's greatest coup, tracking down John and James McNamara, the Iron
Workers Union leaders who confessed to the 1910 bombing of the Los Ange-
les Times building. Less flamboyant but no less effective, Dan Lehon had in
191 1 helped Burns expose extensive graft at the Illinois Central Railroad, a
case celebrated by the muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens.

388 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

In Burns's absence, Frank's supporters pressed ahead on several other
fronts. To begin with, they stepped up the campaign to sway public opinion
to the condemned man's cause, with Albert Lasker and Adolph Ochs again
taking the lead. Lasker induced a number of influential Americans to join
in the call for a new trial. The most prominent individuals to sign on were
Thomas A. Edison and Henry Ford, but the most inspired choice was the
adman's fellow Chicagoan, social worker Jane Addams. In a letter written
at Lasker's behest to a Georgia suffragette, Addams beseeched women to
"protest against the execution of a man concerning whose guilt there is so
much room for doubt." Coming from the nation's greatest champion of the
poor, the letter was intended to counteract the impression that Frank was
nothing more than the darling of his wealthy Jewish supporters. Not sur-
prisingly, it dominated front pages across the country.

Meanwhile, on every day but two during March, the New York Times
published at least one article on the case. Many of these efforts were
straightforward. Yet for each newsbreak, there were myriad plugs for the
defense— a testimonial from the principal at Leo's alma mater, the Pratt
Institute, several of Frank's self-circulated pronouncements, the text of a
sermon by a Philadelphia rabbi demanding a new trial. The defining piece
was a 7,000- word feature that ran beneath the unequivocal banner: leo m.

FRANK, AN INNOCENT MAN, MAY SUFFER A DISGRACEFUL DEATH FOR

another's crime. Herein, staff writer Edward Marshall reported the
results of a fact-finding mission to Atlanta highlighted by a lengthy inter-
view with Jim Conley. According to Marshall, the Negro exhibited no
remorse for either Mary Phagan's murder or for the part he admittedly
played in it, proving himself to be "heartless, brutal, greedy, literally a black
monster, drunken, lowlived, utterly worthless." Conley's only apparent con-
cern was the poor quality of prison food. Concluded Marshall:

That Leo Frank, the highly educated, well-connected and hitherto
respected managing expert in lead pencil manufacture, should be doomed
to die is not more astonishing than that this black human animal, confess-
edly a participant in the horror, should be alive to tell his dreadful tale.

I am convinced that Leo Frank is absolutely innocent of the murder of
Mary Phagan. I am convinced that there has been a great miscarriage of
justice.

The defense did not rely solely on Ochs and Lasker to keep the story in
the news during Burns's absence, picking this moment to release a draft of
the extraordinary motion. The 6o-page document contained much that was

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 389

familiar, including the allegations concerning the hair evidence, the retrac-
tions by McKnight, Epps, and the others and the findings regarding the
paper upon which the second murder note had been scrawled. Yet what
rendered the motion, in Reuben Arnold's estimate, "the strongest ever filed
in Georgia" was its additional bounty of fresh renunciations and charges. In
one affidavit, erstwhile factory employee J. E. Duffy, who testified at the
trial that a cut he'd suffered at work had not dripped on the metal room
floor where blood alleged to have come from Mary Phagan's head wound
was found, swore that in truth he'd bled profusely there. In another, a previ-
ously unmentioned Negro woman named Mary Rich, who ran a lunch
wagon that served the pencil company neighborhood, declared that around
2:20 on the afternoon of the murder, Jim Conley — who'd consistently main-
tained that he was home by this hour— had emerged from the plant base-
ment's back door and bought a 20-cent meal from her, then reentered the
building. In still another, Lula Simmons, a second new name, asserted that
around 4:30 on the afternoon of the murder, she'd been walking by the fac-
tory and heard screams emanating from the basement, a charge suggesting
not only that the crime occurred later in the day than the state contended
but in the location the defense maintained. In the end, however, the items
that created the biggest stir involved the issue that had dominated the case
from the start and was clearly going to dominate the approaching court
fight— Leo Frank's character. For openers came affidavits from Dewey
Hewell, Nellie Pettis, Nellie Wood, Ruth Robinson, Marie Karst, Mamie
Kitchens and Carrie Smith— all state's witnesses— announcing that they
had either been coached into making false accusations of sexual impropri-
ety against their former boss or had done so unwittingly. (According to the
Karst girl, she had responded affirmatively to Hugh Dorsey's question "Is
Frank's reputation for lasciviousness bad?" only because she did not know
what "lasciviousness" meant.) In this same vein but even more damaging to
the prosecution was a retraction by C. Brutus Dalton, the murky figure who
had confirmed Conley's account of Frank's Saturday debauches, the white
man who had madea black man's tale of low doings in high places credible
to 12 white jurors. As Dalton now told it, his testimony regarding office
parties at which he and Frank shared women and beer was a police-
department-produced fabrication drawn from the tawdry details of his life.
After Detectives Starnes and Campbell had learned that he'd used the
plant basement for assignations and that he'd tipped Conley 25 cents to
stand guard, they paid him a visit to ask if Frank had ever "joined in the
immoral conduct." When he replied no, Dalton averred, "Campbell and
Starnes laughed and treated his statement as a joke and insisted that [he]
should admit that the defendant was a man of bad character." The lawmen
were so adamant, Dalton added, that he'd believed he had little choice but

390 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

to assent to their version, though he knew "absolutely nothing about or
against the defendant."

The reverberations from the release of the extraordinary motion— the for-
mal filing of which led to the setting of an April 23 court date, which auto-
matically triggered a stay of execution— had yet to subside when on
Sunday, April 5, William Burns returned to Atlanta, immediately closeting
himself with the operatives Biddinger and Lehon. Long into the evening,
the three remained in conference, picking up again the next morning.
Though there was much to discuss, at the top of the agenda were 49 pages of
just discovered correspondence that Burns believed might well guarantee
the success of Frank's new trial bid. Written between Christmas and late
February, the jailhouse letters of Jim Conley and a female inmate named
Annie Maude Carter not only lent support to the thesis that the Negro was
driven by exceptional lust but revealed what could be a potentially relevant
sexual obsession. In reply to a note in which Annie Maude referred entic-
ingly to her hips, Conley declared:

baby you ought not never said anything to me about your hipped why
my dick went clean across my cell and i read it all night your letter i could
not sleep honey you was right when you said that you had up there what i
wants you said you would hold from the bottom why baby i know you can
do that i just know that and every time [i] read that my long dick got on a
hard why i would like to hold it in one of your hipped this morning and let
you take everything that i have got there with me because i love you so
much and if i could put my sweet long dick in your hipped i think i could
make mama call me papa one time

Responding to the news that Annie Maude intended to post bail, Conley—
in an effort to forestall such an eventuality lest another man "get it before i
do"— again touched on his fixation, proclaiming:

i want you to keep your ass right there [in jail] because it is good and
you told me this last night in your letter that two hours fucking on your big
fat ass would stop all of this [talk] well that right but you know that papa
cannot lay on your ass that long before you would be done made me come
if ever there was a man that want to lay on your ass that me and make me
love it and i will show you better than i can tell you what i can do for you.

now baby if you don't get out on no bond or if you do get out on a bond
you [save] that right hipped for me cause if you hold your fat ass on the

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 391

bottom and make papa go like a kitty cat then you have won a good man
that's me ... if you let papa put his long ugly dick up in your fat ass and
play on your right and left hip just like a monkey playing on a trapeze then
honey papa will be done played hell with you . . .

i see that your mother said that somebody was going to give something
on your bond tell her that you don't want to get out on bonds, because we
are going to do what i say cause i want to stick my long dick in your ass.

well honey this is alright now be a good girl and save your fat ass for me
and i will take care of it . . . give your heart to god and your ass to me

From Burns's perspective, Conley's consistently articulated fleshly pref-
erence ("miss Annie Carter Conley," the Negro enthused elsewhere, "got a
fat ass and a sweet pee hole i do believe and they will be mine soon i will just
want that ass honey") marked him as an unmistakable deviant. Speaking in
general of the letters the detective later asserted that they established
"beyond a peradventure of a doubt that Conley is an abnormal man, just the
vile degenerate that I have heretofore pictured him." Even more significant,
the letters prompted Burns to seek permission to examine the physical evi-
dence introduced at the Frank trial. His theory— one that might explain the
conflicting medical testimony as to whether Mary Phagan had been raped,
one that Luther Rosser had flirted with during his cross-examination of
Sergeant L. S. Dobbs regarding the condition of the victim's underwear—
was that the girl had been anally sodomized and that the physical evidence
would confirm as much, making Conley the likely culprit.

Thus it was that late on the morning of April 8, Burns— accompanied by
Lehon, C. W. Burke (who had acquired the Carter-Conley correspondence)
and Henry Alexander— called at Hugh Dorsey's Thrower Building offices.
Since the era of good feeling among the various parties remained intact, the
solicitor graciously received his visitors, granting them access to the evi-
dence. What the men saw while studying Mary Phagan's clothing, though
failing to confirm that she had been sodomized, disturbed and astonished
them. To begin with, her undershorts, far from being ripped, had, as Rosser
had intimated, been carefully cut from her legs so that her pudendum and
pubic region could, in effect, be displayed. Similarly, a knit undershirt she
had been wearing had also been cut from her torso, one incision starting
beneath her right armpit and traveling across her chest, another curving
around her left breast so that it, too, could be exposed. The killer had at
least fetishized the girl's body. After an hour's observation, Burns and his
associates thanked Dorsey for his courtesy, emerging onto the street to
meet the predictable gaggle of reporters. Considering the nature of what
the detective had just seen, it's no wonder that he was uncharacteristically

392 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

discreet. This was not the occasion to discuss unprintable sex acts— or to
offer interpretations. (By Burns's lights, the sliced-up garments further
pointed the finger at Conley, if for no other reason than the work would
have required more time than the state's theory of the crime allowed.)
Nonetheless, the detective hinted at his probe's direction, announcing:

After examining the clothes worn by Mary Phagan when she was mur-
dered, I am more fully convinced than ever that the crime was committed
by a pervert.

Having satisfied himself that he had amassed sufficient proof against Jim
Conley, Burns threw himself into the corollary effort to demonstrate Leo
Frank's good character. Indeed, even as the detective had been poring over
the physical evidence in Dorsey's office, the first of a battery of physicians
working at his direction was arriving at the Fulton County Tower. In all, six
"specialists on nervous diseases," as the Journal termed them, would exam-
ine the condemned man for signs of degeneracy, and not surprisingly, they
wouldn't waste much time reaching the same conclusion. As the April 9 edi-
tions of the New York Times reported, the medical experts "unanimously
agreed that Frank was normal physically and mentally."

For Burns, the release of the physicians' glowing diagnosis was only the
initial step. He took the second the next day by announcing a headline-
grabbing $1,000 reward for definite "reports concerning acts of perversion
on the part of Leo M. Frank." Burns anticipated few, if any, responses. Which
was why Newport Lanford's reaction caught him unawares. Declared the
detective chief: "I am not so hard up that I am going after that $1,000, but if
Mr. Burns will come down here, we can give him all the information on that
point he desires." The scare, however, was short-lived, for when Burns, again
accompanied by Lehon and Henry Alexander, appeared at headquarters,
Lanford refused to open his files, maintaining that to do so prior to the
approaching court date would be unfair to all sides. Moreover, he made
the claim that the prosecution had never charged Frank with perversion in
the first place. "The state of Georgia and the city detectives [do] not now
and never did claim that Leo Frank is a pervert. The charges of perversion
had no bearing on the case and were injected by the defense." Lanford's
pronouncement, which flew brazenly in the face of the facts, gave Burns a
splendid opportunity, and he seized it, assailing the detective chief in inter-
views with both the Georgian and the Journal, then wiring Adolph Ochs:

Police department today withdrew charge of perversion against Leo M.
Frank . . . Bearing in mind the numerous filthy charges of perversion
which saturated the community prior to the Frank trial and aroused their

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 393

passions, the charges of perversion injected into the case by the State upon
the trial . . . and in the Supreme Court of Georgia, the statement made
today by Chief Lanford is a severe indictment of the police department of
this city and of the outrageous methods used in the prosecution of Frank.

The following morning, the New York Times reprinted Burn's telegram ver-
batim beneath the ringing topper:

ABSOLVE FRANK ON IMMORALITY CHARGE

With the extraordinary motion hearing practically at hand, Leo Frank's
supporters believed that victory was in their grasp. True, there had been fur-
ther rumblings from Tom Watson. The same day the story broke that
Burns's physicians had accorded the condemned man a clean bill of moral
health, the banner atop the Jeffersonian had inquired: "The Leo Frank
Case. Does the State of Georgia Deserve this Nation- Wide Abuse?" As the
Sage saw it, the primary abuser was the New York Times, and in the process
of acquainting his readers with a few of the sheet's one-sided utterances, he
presented his assessment of where its loyalties resided:

Mr. Adolph Ochs, a most useful servant of the Wall Street interests, runs
a Tory paper in New York, whose chief end in life seems to be to uphold all
the atrocities of Special Privilege and all the monstrous demands of Big
Money.

Then, though he could not have known of Albert Lasker's role, Watson
called attention to the larger forces that he sensed behind the pro-Frank
publicity campaign, observing:

Moving heaven and earth to bring influence to bear, Miss Jane Addams
of Chicago was reached. Her letter is on its travels throughout the whole
newspaper world.

Meantime, William Smith had turned down Burns's long-standing request
to interview Jim Conley, decreeing that at least in this instance, the "movie
picture, stage-lecturing sleuth" would not be allowed to indulge his pen-
chant for "bombast." Similarly, Monteen Stover had also rejected Burns's
overtures, beating a retreat from Samuel Boorstin's office after being sum-
moned there to speak to the condemned man's friend, instead to come face-
to-face with the detective. Finally, and most significant, Hugh Dorsey had
again served notice that he intended to put up a fight. To begin with, he
had released an affidavit from Albert McKnight in which the Negro— who

394 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

had recently been jailed— retracted his retraction, reaffirming his allegation
regarding Frank's failure to eat lunch the afternoon of the Phagan murder
and contending that he'd withdrawn it only because Detective C W. Burke
had promised that if he did so, he would secure him a job as a Pullman
porter. Additionally, the solicitor had revealed that he was considering
bringing perjury charges against all other recanting state's witnesses who
failed to return to the fold. Yet despite such troubling auguries, those inside
the defense camp evinced little concern. In their view, they possessed not
merely the evidence to prevail but, thanks to another infusion of Northern
capital, the cash.

The key contribution came on April 20 in the form of a $5,000 draft from
Albert Lasker. By this date, the expenses associated with the battle to win
Frank a new trial had far exceeded preliminary expectations. According
to Herbert Haas's calculations, the final figure would top $30,000, bringing
the total expenditure to date to $80,000. Some of the $30,000 would go to
lawyers, some to medical experts, but most was for Burns. As Haas had con-
fided in a mid- April letter to a supporter: "I asked Mr. Burns and his associ-
ates for a wild guess and they stated that this investigation might cost as
much as . . . $20,000." Initially, the condemned man's allies had attempted
to raise the extra funds from family members and friends, and while they'd
succeeded in securing a $2,500 pledge from the Fulton Bag and Cotton
Mill's Oscar Elsas— a client, of course, of Luther Rosser and Governor
John Slaton— they had failed to receive even a reply from the individual
who'd bankrolled their earlier efforts, Frank's uncle Moses. Hence on April
17, with his war chest down to just $250, Haas had thrown himself on
Lasker's mercy. "I hate to be compelled to write you this," he began, then
laid out the financial realities, concluding: "I do not know that we could
have done further for Frank if you had not come to his assistance."

Lasker's positive response, though not meant to be regarded as a blank
check ("Believe me, my dear Mr. Haas," he wrote from his office above
Chicago's Wabash Avenue, "there is a limit to the money that can be
raised ... I cannot assume any moral responsibility to raise unlimited
money"), was generous. It included not merely the enclosed payment but
another $5,000 "whenever you want it" and the promise to raise $5,000 more
from such midwestern friends as Julius Rosenwald. Furthermore, Lasker—
who from the outset had resented that his fellow crusaders from New York,
while talking a good game,had yet to open their wallets — assured Haas that he
would go to work on them and would not stop until they had contributed at
least $10,000. Which, good to his word, he did, that same day penning the cor-
dial equivalent of a shakedown letter to Louis Wiley, the business manager of
the New York Times. Getting right to the point, Lasker asserted: "Surely, New
York ought to give at least $10,000, and much more. The expense ran away

BRIGHTNESS VISIBLE 395

beyond what I imagined it would . . . However, if it had not been for the
energy, influence and money expended, Frank, innocent though he is, would
have been hung long ago . . . Will you please get the ball in motion and raise
the maximum amount you can?"

In Louis Wiley, Lasker had picked the perfect emissary to New York's
socially connected and socially conscious Jewish elite. An obsequious yet
droll bachelor who happened to serve as Adolph Ochs's financial aide,
Wiley was a popular regular at the city's select restaurants and at parties in
its best homes. He would know exactly whom to contact. And he did. On
April 22, Wiley mailed a copy of Lasker's letter along with an explanatory
note— typed on the Times letterhead— to Jacob H. Schiff. Whether Wiley
contemplated that in seeking contributions in his paper's name he was
compromising its objectivity remains unknown. Likewise, it's impossible to
say whether he was aware of the views advanced in the fall of 1913 by the
American Jewish Committee's Louis Marshall cautioning against an
overtly Jewish fund drive. Regardless, by the date Wiley wrote Schiff, the
Times had clearly crossed the boundary between journalism and advocacy.
Moreover, with court slated to convene in Atlanta at ten the next morning,
time was of the essence.

The extraordinary motion hearing, which convened in the library of the
state capitol, started slowly, the initial session being devoted almost entirely
to the presentation of the lengthy and by this juncture widely familiar doc-
ument. But the second day saw a series of sensational developments. The
first was the reading of an affidavit by Annie Maude Carter in which she not
only acknowledged the existence of her correspondence with Jim Conley
but alleged that in return for her acceptance of his marriage proposal, he'd
confessed to Mary Phagan's murder. As Annie Maude told it:

During Christmas week I was talking with Conley in his cell and he said
he would tell me the whole truth about it. I asked him why he waited so
long and he said, "If I tell you, will you marry me?" and I told him, "Yes."
He then told me that he really did the murder of Mary Phagan, but that it
was so plainly shown on Mr. Frank that he let it go that way. He begged me
never to say anything about this.

He said he was sitting on a box in the factory when the girl came down;
that he told her someone had called her; that she turned back and he then
struck her with his fist, knocking her down; that he dropped her through the
hole; that he then took her around by the furnace, starting to burn her, but
his conscience wouldn't let him; that he put her down there to make people
believe Newt Lee did it; that afterward he found a piece of blank paper,

396 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

tears it in two, picks up a pencil and puts the paper on the cellar door and
writes the notes; that he first took the notes and put them in her bosom, then
he took them out and laid them by her side; that he then took a thing they
opened boxes with and pulled the staple out of the back door and went out.

He told me that he kept the money he found in the purse, but gave the
purse to a negro child.

I have not told this before because I only got out of jail March 9, 1914,
but I want to tell the whole truth about what he told me while in jail, and I
am willing to take the witness stand and swear to this at any time.

No sooner had reaction to the Carter affidavit subsided than Frank's
lawyers let fly another shocker— a sworn statement by the Reverend C. B.
Ragsdale, pastor of Atlanta's Plum Street Baptist Church, who averred that
on the Monday night following little Mary's murder, he'd overheard Jim
Conley confess the crime to a third party in an alley behind Terminal Sta-
tion. As Ragsdale told it:

One of the men said to the other, "I am in trouble and want you to help
me out. I killed a girl at the National Pencil Factory," and the other man
said, "Well, who all was there?" and the first speaker said, "Nobody there
but Mr. Frank, and I am not certain whether he was there or not." That
immediately upon ending the part of the conversation here testified to,
these two parties started out of the alley [and] deponent discovered that
they were darkies.

In a supporting affidavit, R. L. Barber, a Plum Street Church member who
said he was with Ragsdale the night in question, confirmed the preacher's
account, adding that he had advised him against speaking out at the time
for fear of getting "mixed up in the situation."

For Hugh Dorsey, the cumulative impact of the Carter and Ragsdale affi-
davits—which over his objections were added to the extraordinary motion
as amendments— was devastating. Because he hadn't heard any of the
charges before, much less had a chance to prepare, he had little choice but
to ask Judge Hill for a one-week postponement. Yet what, if anything, the
solicitor could do during this period was an open question. The defense had
completed its case with a flourish. Declared Leo Frank in a circular released
to the press shortly after court recessed:

A fair trial is what I want, what I am entitled to, and what no fair-
minded man will deny me, and I appeal to the fair-minded people whose
silent influence stands back of the courts and whose servants the courts are
to see that I am given a fair trial.

FIFTEEN

ometime early on the morning of Friday, May i, an open-air touring
, car carrying William Burns and Dan Lehon departed downtown

Atlanta, headed for the little crossroads community of Cedartown,
45 miles to the northwest. The detectives were on their way to interview
a potential witness, and they were in a hurry. During the week that had
passed since the initial hearings on the extraordinary motion, the optimism
that had so infused Leo Frank's camp had given way to a fretful anxiety.
Just the night before, Herbert Haas, in a despairing letter to Albert Lasker,
observed: "Sentiment is as keen against Frank today as it was during the
trial." The next round of hearings was reconvening this same day, and not
only did Burns and Lehon hope to unearth new information that would be
useful to the defense, by so doing they hoped to vindicate their reputation,
for as they were well aware, the gathering storm had been largely precipi-
tated by charges of impropriety against themselves and their associates.

The initial allegations had been leveled by Tom Watson. Boomed the
headline atop the Jeffersonian's April 23 edition:

How Much Longer Will the People of Atlanta Endure the Lawless Doings
of William J. Burns? What Right Has This Sham Detective to Tamper With
the Witnesses That Told the Truth on LEO FRANK, THAT FOUL
DEGENERATE WHO MURDERED LITTLE MARY PHAG AN?

Watson regarded Burns as the embodiment of the interloping forces that
he believed were attempting to subvert Georgia justice— "the conspiracy
of Big Money against the law, against the courts, and against the poor little
victim of hellish passion." Moreover, he was appalled by his methods.
"If Burns were an honest man," he contended, "legitimately seeking to
uncover crime, no one could criticize him. But when he comes to Georgia
and begins to work on witnesses who have already testified under oath, and
when he uses threats, IF NOT BRIBES, to prevail on them to change their
evidence, he makes himself a criminal." Taking the detective's effort to
obtain a retraction from Monteen Stover as an emblematic example, the
Sage inquired:

398 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

What right did Burns have to try to persuade, or intimidate, that young
woman into committing perjury?

What right did he have to get her into Samuel Boorstein's [sic] office?
What right did he have to thrust himself upon the girl while she was there?

Such behavior, declared Watson, could be read in but one way: "The Great
Detective is working to suppress the evidence." And it could be responded
to in but one way:

This man Burns richly deserves a coat of tar and feathers, plus a ride on
a fence-rail. He has been engineering a campaign of systematic lies tending
to blacken this state and tending to provoke an outbreak of popular indig-
nation

With all the bravado of a shallow bluffer, and with all the insolence of
irresponsibility, he has gone to the extreme limit of toleration.

There may not be a way by which the law can reach him, but there is a
way to reach him.

The Jeffersonian's broadside would not have done lasting harm had not
subsequent events seemed to confirm Watson's charges. On April 27, the
Reverend C B. Ragsdale retracted his statement that he had overheard Jim
Conley confess to Mary Phagan's murder, asserting that an unnamed Burns
agent had paid him to make the claim. In an affidavit produced for Hugh
Dorsey, the preacher swore that his tale was cooked up during several
meetings with R. L. Barber and the anonymous operative, then presented
to Dan Lehon and, finally, to Burns and Luther Rosser. Ragsdale's pro-
fessed motivation: "They were just handing money out." In a related state-
ment, the preacher's sons offered further insight into their father's actions,
explaining that due to ill health and financial need, he had been easily vic-
timized by Frank's allies. The evening the news broke, Ragsdale resigned
his pastorate, ashamedly telling a church committee that he had received
$200 for the false testimony.

Though Burns had immediately denied Ragsdale's accusation, terming it
"a cowardly lie by a cowardly liar," the defense chose to cut the preacher
loose, and on April 28, Rosser and Reuben Arnold asked Judge Benjamin
Hill to strike his affidavit from the extraordinary motion. That done, the
lawyers went to work trying to limit the damage, denouncing Ragsdale
("We want nothing to do with him," snorted Arnold) while simultaneously
maintaining that at first, neither he nor Barber had given them reason to
think any misconduct had been involved. In a joint statement issued by
Rosser, Arnold, and Herbert and Leonard Haas, the defense contended:
"On Thursday, April 23, 1914, there appeared at the office of L. Z. Rosser

DARKNESS FALLS 399

two men who claimed to have important information in reference to the
Frank trial. [We] believed that they were acting from pure motives to cor-
rect the wrong of their former silence." The intention was to make the inci-
dent look like an aberration. Arnold even attempted to dismiss it as a joke,
declaring: "Since the state set the example for lying by placing Jim Conley
on the stand, it seems that all of the liars in Georgia are trying to break into
this case."

Watson, however, would not let the matter die. Roared the double-deck
banner atop the Jeffersonian's April 30 edition:

The Frank Case; the Great Detective; and the Frantic
Efforts of Big Money to Protect Crime

As Watson saw it, the Ragsdale incident confirmed his earlier pro-
nouncements. After ridiculing the substance of the preacher's original story
(how was it, he asked, that Ragsdale and Barber were standing in a dark
alley at the moment Conley was there admitting to little Mary's murder?),
he pointedly intoned:

God deliver us from a preacher who says he knew all the time that
Frank was innocent but did not have the honesty and courage to say so
until William J. Burns came upon the scene. If William J. Burns and lots of
shekels had not arrived, Ragsdale apparently would have gone on preach-
ing, while an innocent man was being hanged.

Ragsdale thus condemned, Watson lit into several of Burns's other
contributions to the extraordinary motion, most devastatingly the Annie
Maude Carter letters. To support his argument that the missives were as inau-
thentic as the preacher's tale, Watson called attention to the specific sexual
preference they attributed to Conley. Then, drawing upon a broadly shared
assumption among Southern whites as to the Negro libido, he proclaimed:

Now, let me tell you a fact which all men who were raised on a planta-
tion with negroes will substantiate. Negro men will commit bestiality, but
they will never commit sodomy.

The negro is naturally lustful and will take a female, even a beast, if it
costs his life, but he never takes a woman UNNATURALLY.

And this was merely a prelude. In a far-ranging disquisition that seemed
intended to suggest that Leo Frank would have been more inclined to
indulge in the sort of acts mentioned in the Carter letters than Conley, the
Sage rakishly added:

400 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Is it possible that the Great Detective does not know the vital differ-
ence between the crimes of lust in the barbarian and the same crimes in the
degenerates of civilization?

The excited barbarian, like the brutish negro, may commit bestiality; but
it is the degenerate of wealth and culture who commits sodomy.

It was so in the Bible; it was so in the decay of Grecian civilization; it
was the crime of luxury and corruption in Rome; it was the crime of effete
Orientalism; it was the crime of Prince Eulenburg's elegantly decadent
"set" at the imperial court of Germany.

In other words, sodomy, committed by a man on a woman, is peculiarly
the rotten spot of a highly developed civilization.

Though there were obviously those who might have quarreled with Wat-
son's conclusions regarding the Annie Maude Carter letters— not to men-
tion his theories on perversion— few among them were readers of the
Jeffersonian. No, Watson's growing constituency (in Atlanta, speculators
who bought out newsstand stocks of his paper at the five-cent cover price
were easily reselling them at a quarter a copy) regarded his insights as gospel.
Asserted one correspondent: "You not only expressed my sentiments, but
you expressed the belief of ninety per cent of the people (Gentiles)." Echoed
another: "Tom Watson is a lighthouse of strength ever ready with tongue and
pen to give courage to the wavering masses— for he loves them."

As the touring car carrying Burns and Lehon raced north, passing out of Ful-
ton County into Cobb, the controversy raged on in the May i newspapers.

HORRIBLE MISTAKE IN CASE OF FRANK, STATES W. J. BURNS, declared the

Constitution's front page headline, beneath which the detective not only
again denied Ragsdale's charges but took issue with the most serious of Wat-
son's claims. "In the matter of Ragsdale," he asserted, "I must say that his
statement that I or anyone in the employ of the Burns agency bribed or
attempted to bribe him is utterly untrue. In mentioning my name as one of
those present when the affidavit was 'drawn' from him, he is stating an
absolute falsehood." That said, Burns restated the contention that the Sage
had so mockingly disparaged. "I have absolutely cleared Leo Frank of the
charge of perversion, which was wholly responsible for his conviction, and I
have also demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jim Conley is a
pervert and was the murderer of little Mary Phagan." Finally, he issued a
public plea for understanding:

I would like to say one thing to the people of Atlanta. In all of my expe-
rience I have never been so moved as I have been in the Frank case.

DARKNESS FALLS 401

Putting back of this statement my thirty years in the study and detection of
crime, I say to you more earnestly than I ever spoke before in my life that
in driving Leo M. Frank to his death without giving him a fair trial, you are
making the most horrible, the most awful mistake I ever heard of.

The likelihood that such a mistake could be averted would, of course,
increase if the mission upon which the detectives were now embarked—
which was to meet a source who could supposedly further corroborate the
allegations of degeneracy against Conley— succeeded.

The route to Cedartown runs through Marietta, but just as the Cobb
County Courthouse— a handsome redbrick edifice whose clock tower
soared above the tree line— came into view, the car carrying Burns and
Lehon blew a tire. Hoping to make quick work of it, the detectives left their
chauffeur with the machine and walked into Mary Phagan's hometown in
search of a garage.

Though Marietta appeared on the surface little more than a satellite of
Atlanta, it was, in truth, a fiercely independent place. At once agricultural
(in 1910, Cobb County boasted 2,684 farms) and industrial (a sophisticated
machine shop that produced sleek steam engines, a textile mill that turned
out 14,000 pairs of men's half-hose daily, two busy furniture manufacturers
and a well-regarded marble monument fabricator were all located here),
the town afforded its 5,000 inhabitants a great degree of financial auton-
omy. Marietta's wealth manifested itself in the many stylish shops that
surrounded its bandstand-adorned central square and in the numerous
well-preserved antebellum homes that lined its best streets. What set the
town apart, however, was less a matter of economics than of attitude. Forty-
nine years after Appomattox, Marietta was still defiantly unreconstructed.
The town tolerated Yankees, but it wouldn't be unfair to say that its basic
view of them had not changed since 1862 when a group of Union soldiers
dressed in civilian clothing slipped into Marietta and hijacked a north-
bound Confederate train, the Texas. What followed was one of the Civil
War's most dramatic incidents— the Great Locomotive Chase, a harrowing
pursuit that ended at the Tennessee line when the Texas ran out of fuel.
Eight of the Northerners were hanged as spies, a fact of which Mariettans
remained inordinately proud.

Not that Burns and Lehon, as they approached the Brumby Garage on
Church Street just off the Marietta square, would at this late date have had
reason to feel they were entering enemy territory. True, during the weeks
since they had launched their investigation, the town had started to make
its sympathies known. The local chapter of the United Confederate Veter-
ans had inaugurated a campaign to erect an elaborate monument at Mary
Phagan's grave. The Cobb County Democratic Committee, concerned that

402 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Frank's fate, pending the result of the extraordinary motion hearing, could
end up in the hands of John Slaton, had passed a resolution asking the gov-
ernor, who was, of course, Luther Rosser's partner, to "define his position,"
becoming the first group to call attention to the fact that should executive
clemency be requested, Slaton would face a conflict of interests. Still, such
expressions hardly constituted threats, and the detectives would almost cer-
tainly have been quickly back on their way to Cedartown had they not been
recognized by a passerby who aside from being a devotee of Tom Watson
was the namesake of the South's most revered historical figure.

No sooner had Robert E. Lee Howell satisfied himself that the familiar-
looking redheaded stranger standing in front of the Brumby Garage was
Burns than he stormed up to the detective and in a frighteningly matter-of-
fact tone announced: "I have promised to beat you if you ever came to
Marietta, and here goes." With that, Howell, a diminutive but dangerous
character who was the black-sheep member of a renowned Georgia family
(one cousin was the editor of the Constitution, another Hugh Dorsey's law
partner), slapped Burns 's cheeks. Then he let loose with a barrage of curses,
drawing a crowd. Many in the number— which, thanks to the fact that Mari-
etta was teeming with farmers in town for a county election, reached sev-
eral hundred— had been reading the Jeffersonian, and the cry of "Lynch
him" rent the air.

Burns and Lehon suddenly found themselves confronting genuine peril
(a knife- wielding member of the mob had to be physically restrained), and
after realizing as much, the two did the only sensible thing. They made a run
for it, Burns bolting into an adjacent neighborhood, Lehon heading to the
nearby courthouse, where he took refuge in the sheriffs office. Accounts as
to what happened next vary. According to Burns, he "walked down the back
streets for about an hour," hoping that tempers would cool. An anonymous
Mariettan, however, recalled otherwise: "The great detective ran through
several dark alleys as fast as his legs would carry him, and those that saw
him in action do say that he certainly showed a wonderful burst of speed."
Either way, Burns eventually wound up behind locked doors at the Whit-
lock House, a hotel on the southwestern outskirts of town.

It didn't take long for word to spread where Burns was hiding, and
within minutes the crowd from the Brumby Garage had recongregated.
Several of Marietta's more "level-headed citizens"— as the Constitution
termed them— appeared on the scene and one by one begged the throng to
disperse, but to no avail. Whereupon Newton Augustus Morris, judge of the
Blue Ridge Circuit, of which Cobb County was part, stepped to the fore and
proposed a deal. In return for the detective's departure from Marietta, he
demanded assurance of his safe passage. To this there was a general assent,
yet success was hardly a foregone conclusion, as Burns's chauffeur, after

DARKNESS FALLS 403

being threatened by Robert E. Lee Howell, had patched his tire and fled.
Soon enough, however, a White Sixty belonging to Thomas M. Brumby,
proprietor of the town's largest furniture manufacturer, pulled up to the
Whitlock House, and amid a shower of eggs— one of which hit Judge
Morris in the head— Burns was whisked out of Marietta. Shortly there-
after, Cobb County mule dealer J. F. "Coon" Shaw bundled Lehon into his
Overland 30 and departed as well. A disaster had been averted, but a chill-
ing message had been conveyed. As the New York Times subsequently
reported:

Bob Howell's hand, which slapped Burns in the face, struck fire out of
all Georgia. In a dramatic way, it focused attention on a growing opinion
that money and "outside influence" were being used to save a rich man
from punishment for the murder of a working girl.

Alarming as what had transpired in Marietta was for the defense, what
had been occurring at the same time in the state capitol library back in
Atlanta was possibly worse. From the moment the extraordinary motion
hearing resumed, almost nothing had gone Leo Frank's way. The setbacks
began when Judge Benjamin Hill rejected an eleventh-hour attempt by the
condemned man's lawyers to make Burns's findings regarding the condi-
tion of Mary Phagan's underwear part of the motion. "I do not care to go
behind the record in this case," declared Hill, contending that the trial jury
had received ample opportunity to examine the garments, then adding:
"Burns is simply giving his opinion." Hard upon this ruling, the judge dealt
the defense a second blow by stopping Leonard Haas from reading the
Annie Maude Carter letters aloud. While Hill agreed to take the missives
into consideration, he asserted that their language was too offensive to be
aired publicly. He would read them privately in chambers.

With the defense's hopes of establishing the specific manner in which
Mary Phagan had been sexually abused thus greatly diminished and any
chance for Georgians to reach their own conclusions regarding Jim Con-
ley's predilections likewise lessened, Hugh Dorsey had launched into his
countershowing. Speaking in general of the case Frank's lawyers had pre-
sented, he proclaimed: "If nothing added to nothing makes something, then
there is something to this extraordinary motion." Next he denounced the
methods that had been used in putting the case together, reiterating the
accusation that the Burns agency had bribed Ragsdale while pointing out
that Burns operatives had collected many other statements the defense had
placed before the court. The implications could not have been plainer, but
rather than dwell on them, the solicitor stunned the room by announcing
that before he was done, he would prove Burns guilty of another transgres-

404 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

sion.The investigator, he charged, had spirited Annie Maude Carter out of
Atlanta, making it impossible for state's officers to question her.

Having thereby suggested an extensive pattern of abuse, Dorsey—
speaking from behind a table stacked with affidavits that had been gath-
ered for the state during the past weeks by Detectives Black and Starnes
and lawyer William Smith— began a systematic assault on the extraordi-
nary motion. The first target was the defense's claim that the hairs discov-
ered by R. P. Barrett on the factory lathe did not match those taken by Dr.
Henry F. Harris during his autopsy. After citing undertaker Will Gheesling's
recent testimony that the soap he'd used in preparing the remains for burial
could have altered Harris's sample in ways that compromised any compar-
ison, the solicitor read statements from a number of factory employees who
contended that the hair found on the lathe matched Mary Phagan's. He fol-
lowed these endorsements with one from a far more authoritative source—
the victim's stepfather, John W. Coleman. His position was this: Whatever
Harris's findings, the people who knew little Mary were in the best position
to judge, and they had done so.

The object of Dorsey's next sally was the retraction the defense had
elicited from Albert McKnight. The affidavit the solicitor now read sug-
gested that the husband of the Franks' Negro cook would never have
recanted had not C. W. Burke threatened him. According to McKnight, the
detective— after promising to help find him the job as a Pullman porter—
stated that if he did not renounce his assertion regarding the superinten-
dent's allegedly suspicious behavior on the day of the murder, "the Jews"
would get him.

To this point, Dorsey had not broken much fresh ground, but from here
on out he would attack previously unchallenged portions of the extraordi-
nary motion. For openers, he took aim at Lula Simmons, the woman whose
claim that she'd heard screams coming from the pencil factory basement at
4:30 on the afternoon of the crime had been put forth by the defense to con-
tradict the state's theories as to both the time and place of the murder.
Through affidavits from neighbors, police officers and even a son-in-law, the
solicitor portrayed Mrs. Simmons as a duplicitous creature who'd once run
a house of prostitution. He then read a statement from Mrs. Simmons her-
self in which she not only repudiated the assertions attributed to her by
Frank's lawyers but alleged that they had been fabricated by a man named
Burns or Burke.

Mrs. Simmons's account thus discredited, Dorsey moved to reaffirm the
prosecution's position as to when and where the murder occurred, intro-
ducing affidavits from W.T and I. V.TUcker, a father and son who swore that
around 12:10 on the afternoon of the crime, they had been passing the pen-
cil factory and had heard screams coming from its second floor. During

DARKNESS FALLS 405

Frank's trial, they said, they'd remained quiet for fear of getting "mixed up
in the case." But upon learning of Mrs. Simmons's statement, they'd decided
to come forth.

Helpful as all of this was to Dorsey, his main goal was the destruction of
the half-dozen retractions the defense had secured from factory girls who
at the trial had sworn to Frank's moral turpitude. The solicitor started the
process by reading a statement from Carrie Smith, who after declaring that
the recantation attributed to her was a forgery, unfurled a tale regarding
the efforts of a heretofore unmentioned man known as "Mr. Maddox" to
manipulate her. As the girl told it, Maddox, posing as an author writing a
book on the case, had promised to share his commission with her if she
would sign an affidavit repudiating her testimony. When she rejected the
proposal, she said that Maddox lured her to the law firm of Rosser, Bran-
don, Slaton & Phillips where in an office marked "Mr. Slaton" he made the
same overture. Again, she said, she declined.

No sooner had Dorsey finished with Smith's story than he presented a
statement from Marie Karst, the factory worker who the defense maintained
had testified to Frank's poor character solely because she'd misunderstood
the solicitor when he'd used the word "lasciviousness." Yet according to what
she now swore, the girl— though she'd indeed been stumped by the fancy
term— had comprehended Dorsey 's meaning perfectly well. As the Journal
put it: "She knew Frank's relations with women and knew his character was
bad." Moreover, according to Karst, during the preparation of the extraordi-
nary motion C. W. Burke had hired her to "interview all the girl witnesses"
against the superintendent. Midway into the job, she said, Burke informed
her, "Well, I've got Carrie Smith where I want her." While Karst didn't spell
it out, the point was clear —Burke and the mysterious Mr. Maddox were one
and the same. Burke fired her, she added, when she refused his request to
"live with Monteen Stover and persuade her to change her testimony."

Dorsey followed Karst's affidavit with one from Nellie Pettis, who like-
wise renounced her retraction and reiterated the truth of her trial testi-
mony. Frank, she said, had made "improper proposals" to her. As if this
weren't enough, she also claimed that during the weeks prior to the extraor-
dinary motion hearings, someone resembling Mr. Maddox had tried to
maneuver her into the defense camp.

As at both the trial and the coroner's inquest, Dorsey next introduced
another Nellie. Nellie Wood's statement echoed the Pettis girl's in that it
contained a renunciation of the retraction submitted by the defense and a
reaffirmation of the original charges of sexual misconduct against Frank. In
the end, though, this Nellie did her namesake a couple better. First, in an
accusation that seemed to confirm one of Conley's most damaging claims,
she said that the superintendent had once informed her he was "not like

406 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

other men." Then she alluded to a previously unmentioned Burns operative
named Jimmy Wrenn who, as she told it, had promised big money in return
for an affidavit favorable to Frank.

With afternoon shadows lengthening, Dorsey concluded Friday's session
by returning to the topic with which he'd started— the hair evidence.
According to a statement from the factory machinist R. P. Barrett, Jimmy
Wrenn had also recently approached him with a proposition— a lucrative
job in exchange for a retraction of his testimony regarding the strands he'd
found twined around his lathe.

On that note, Judge Hill adjourned the proceedings for the day, and
Luther Rosser, Reuben Arnold, and Herbert and Leonard Haas immedi-
ately went into conference with Burns and Lehon, who'd just returned from
Marietta. With the papers' late editions brimming with bad news ("Defense
Affidavits Forged, Says Dorsey," boomed the Georgian's headline; angry
crowd drives burns from marietta, reported the Journal's), there was
little reason for cheer, and what reason there was decreased even further
when early in the evening a Fulton County deputy sheriff rapped on the
door and served Burns and Lehon with subpoenas demanding their pres-
ence in court at the resumption of hearings on Monday. When asked by
reporters why he had summoned the detectives, Dorsey responded: "Oh, I
merely want to ask them a few questions."

Owing to the fact that William Burns was due in Oklahoma the next week
to testify in a federal case, Saturday morning found the various parties gath-
ered inside a hastily procured Thrower Building courtroom. The ordeal
now awaiting the celebrated detective— while less dangerous than the one
he'd faced in Marietta— was nonetheless laden with peril.

Hugh Dorsey began by inquiring into whether news stories reporting
that Burns had easily determined that Leo Frank was, as he'd put it, sexu-
ally "normal" were accurate. Yes, the detective readily replied, happy to
repeat such a finding. To which the solicitor rejoined: "Do you profess to be
able by talking to a man for a short while to tell whether he is a pervert?"

"No," Burns conceded, "but I feel by talking to him I can form a definite
conclusion."

"How do you tell that a man is not a pervert?" Dorsey pressed.

Though Burns may not have sensed danger here, Reuben Arnold did,
but Judge Hill overruled his objection, whereupon the detective declared:
"I am somewhat a student of human nature. As I work with criminal classes,
I frequently come in contact with them."

"Do you consider your opinion in the matter as trustworthy and accu-
rate?"

DARKNESS FALLS 407

"I do."

Having thus encouraged Burns's natural tendency to boast, the solicitor
struck. "Did you have any conversation with Jim Conley before you reached
the conclusion that he is a pervert?"

"No," came the response.

"Then, in this case you substituted a less trustworthy method?"

Burns countered by alluding to his determinations regarding Mary Pha-
gan's underwear and the Annie Maude Carter letters, getting in a few words
concerning the evidence that the defense believed Judge Hill had slighted.
Conley, he said, "satisfies his passions in an unnatural manner." Yet his
responses to the solicitor's further queries relative to the topic of deviancy
were vague and unconvincing.

A key plank of Frank's new trial bid thereby made to appear less weighty
than it was, Dorsey directed Burns to the charge that he or his agents had
bribed state's witnesses to change their testimony. The detective denied the
allegation, but significantly, he did not dismiss the possibility that in some
instances, money may have changed hands, saying only: "If any of my men
did such a thing, he violated all the rules of the agency." On the heels of
this qualified assurance, the solicitor quizzed Burns regarding the agents
assigned to the case, eliciting the admission that Jimmy Wrenn— the indi-
vidual mentioned in Friday's tales of wrongdoing— was on the payroll. In
fact, the detective allowed that he'd engaged a small army of operatives,
among them Boots Rogers, the driver who'd carried the responding officers
to the pencil factory the morning Mary Phagan's body was discovered, and
L. P. Whitfield and W. D. MacWorth, the Pinkerton investigators who'd bro-
ken with Harry Scott over his zeal to pin the murder on Frank. The news
that the detective had recruited men formerly associated with the prosecu-
tion set reporters to scribbling. The biggest stir, however, was caused by a
new name, Carlton Tedder, who was an assistant to William Smith. While
Burns didn't explicitly say so, the implication was that he'd hired an inform-
ant in the state's camp.

Though the behavior to which Burns had thus far admitted did not con-
stitute criminal wrongdoing, his testimony had undoubtedly put him in
jeopardy. Indeed, the more the detective revealed of his behind-the-scenes
activities, the more he risked. Which was why when Dorsey started probing
specific areas of alleged misconduct, Burns attempted to lay the responsi-
bility on others. Regarding his first knowledge of the Reverend C. B. Rags-
dale, for instance, he asserted:

Lehon came in and said the character of the preacher had been sustained.
I told him I would have nothing to do with it and advised him to take the
matter to the attorneys and let them investigate it and do what they wanted.

408 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Similarly, when the solicitor inquired into the provenance of the Annie
Maude Carter letters, Burns reiterated that they'd been discovered by C. W.
Burke, then added that they'd initially been called to his attention by Her-
bert and Leonard Haas. The detective was distancing himself from the
extraordinary motion's strongest components.

Considering the fanfare with which Burns had been brought into the
affair and the volubility with which he'd heretofore touted his progress, his
newfound reticence not only seemed out of character, but it opened him up
to attack from an altogether different angle:

"Tell us one thing you have done in the— how long is it, sixty days— you
have been at work on this case?" Dorsey inquired.

"Well," replied Burns, "I have read the Brief of Evidence very carefully.
I went over the factory. I interviewed the witnesses there, and I came to
your office and examined the garments of the dead girl."

"There were over ioo state's witnesses," the solicitor shot back. "How
many of them have you examined?"

"I don't know."

"Didn't you read the record," Dorsey then demanded, by that meaning
the several thousand pages of transcript.

"I read the Brief," Burns repeated, conceding that he'd made do with
the shorter summary used during the appeal.

"Name some of the witnesses you have examined?"

"Schiff, Darley, Lemmie Quinn, Holloway, Frank himself— I don't
remember the others."

All of the individuals Burns cited were, of course, from the defense's
side of the aisle. As a consequence, the solicitor catechized the detective
concerning some state's witnesses.

"Have you seen Newt Lee?"

"No."

"Have you talked with Starnes and Campbell?"

"No."

"Have you talked with Dr. Claude Smith, who examined the blood
stains on the second floor?"

"No."

"Did you talk to Mel Stanford?"

"No."

"Did you talk to Barrett?"

"No."

The conclusion thus seemingly inescapable, Dorsey rounded out his
examination by posing a question whose answer, he believed, would con-

DARKNESS FALLS 409

firm the charge he'd made on Friday in his introductory statement. Gazing
directly at Burns, he asked: "Did you order that Annie Maude Carter be
sent out of town?"

"I suggested it," the detective admitted.

"Who sent her out of town?"

"Mr.Lehon."

"Where did he send her?"

Here, Burns turned to the bench for help, but Judge Hill instructed him
to respond, so he did: "To New Orleans."

"After she made her affidavit in this case and became a witness, you
mean to tell the court that you had her sent out of the jurisdiction?"

"Yes," Burns reiterated, adding that he'd done so in order to keep the
state's officers from "bamboozling her." Which was what he believed had
occurred to Carrie Smith, Marie Karst and all the others who'd repudiated
their retractions. Yet even if these things had happened, by acknowledging
the role he'd played in sending Carter away, the detective found himself
close to being in contempt of court.

From Dorsey's perspective, there could be no better ending place.

To give Reuben Arnold credit,he made a valiant effort to salvage Burns's turn
upon the stand, opening his examination by introducing the hostile atmo-
sphere in which the detective— notwithstanding the authorities' pledges of
cooperation— had been forced to work.

"Mr. Burns," Arnold began, "have you found it difficult on account of the
attitude of the public to make an investigation in this case?"

"Extremely so."

"Have you in all your experience ever encountered more stubborn and
unreasoning prejudice?"

"I most certainly have not."

"Have you found it difficult to hold a man's evidence after you have
obtained it?"

"I have."

The defense's thesis sketched out, Arnold directed Burns to particular
instances in which he felt he'd faced interference. Regarding Conley, the
detective repeated the story of how William Smith had rejected his request
to interview the Negro. Regarding Albert McKnight, he reiterated that the
husband of the Franks' cook had withdrawn his retraction only after being
jailed.

Arnold next directed Burns to the topic of Conley's trial testimony, the
hope being that he could take a crack at some of its well-known inconsis-
tencies. But no sooner had the lawyer posed his first query than Judge Hill

410 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

cut him off, citing the same rationale he'd given on Friday to bar the detec-
tive's opinions concerning the condition of little Mary's underwear. The
jury had already passed on the matter.

Another vital avenue of inquiry thus precluded, Arnold found himself at
a loss; hence he concluded by endeavoring to blunt the accusations of mis-
conduct that had been leveled at the detective.

"Mr. Burns," he asked, "did you ever attempt to get anything in this case
except the truth?"

"No."

"Did you ever by the offer of bribes, intimidation or any other improper
methods seek to obtain evidence from witnesses?"

"I assuredly did not."

With that, Arnold was done, and Judge Hill brought down his gavel.

As the combatants filed out of the Thrower Building, a smiling Hugh
Dorsey announced that he couldn't wait to get at Dan Lehon on Monday.
Members of the defense team, however, said nothing. Which was under-
standable, for after what had just transpired, their mood was even darker
than it had been the day before.

Yet silent as Frank's lawyers were in public, in private, they bled. "I
regret to advise that the situation here is desperate," Herbert Haas wrote
Albert Lasker that afternoon. Describing the morning's hearing, he as-
serted:

Judge Hill allowed the Solicitor to inquire into every phase of Mr. Burns'
investigation and connection with the case . . . every confidential matter
that came to mind. The objections of the defense were promptly overruled.
Mr. Arnold then conducted a cross-examination of Mr. Burns and after
asking several questions was abruptly stopped by Judge Hill, with the
admonition that he would not permit any questions to reflect on the ver-
dict of the jury ... In other words, the court ruled that the State could have
the widest latitude to hurt Frank, whether the testimony was relevant or
irrelevant, but that the defense could show up nothing by Mr. Burns that
would help Frank.

The court, however, was not solely to blame. Providing the first indication
of internal dissension, Haas noted: "It is the belief of nearly all of our
friends that Burns's connection with the case has done us irretrievable
damage." The lawyer admitted that he had been unable to pin down any-
thing improper that had been done but added that he had no idea how the
detective turned up Ragsdale. He also believed that Burns's infatuation
with the press had both offended Dorsey and raised undue expectations.
"We tried to keep Burns from talking all the time but there was nothing to

DARKNESS FALLS 411

stop him. Of course, that cannot be helped now, but it is our intention to call
[him] off the case upon the termination of the . . . hearings." Whether the
lawyer stopped to consider that the recipient of his letter bore the responsi-
bility for hiring Burns cannot be known. But even if he did, now was no
time for niceties. Taking a look around him, Haas concluded: "All of us feel
that the situation is hopeless."

Hugh Dorsey was not about to put on the brakes. The solicitor intended to
decimate the extraordinary motion. When the hearings reconvened back at
the state capitol library at 10 on Monday morning, he called Dan Lehon to
the stand, but where he'd grilled Burns on all manner of topics, he was now
interested in only one— money. Who was financing the investigation? Were
the fees paid by check or in cash? How and when were operatives compen-
sated? The questions came in a relentless rapid fire, and though Lehon
avoided any mention of Albert Lasker— he consistently named Herbert
Haas as the probe's source of funding— he was forced into several damag-
ing admissions. For one, he revealed that just days before the defense
secured C. B. Ragsdale's affidavit, he'd advanced $500 to the agent who had
alerted him to the preacher's story. For another, he said it was standard
practice to give the likes of Boots Rogers and L. P. Whitfield the occasional
ten spot to cover operating costs. Of course, Lehon added, there were inno-
cent justifications for these expenditures, but despite such an assurance, his
testimony seemed to confirm the widely shared view that the defense had
been purchasing evidence.

Once Lehon stepped down, Dorsey turned to a stack of affidavits on the
table before him and resumed his item-by-item assault on the new trial
bid's individual parts. The first statement the solicitor read was by Ruth
Robinson, who not surprisingly retracted her retraction as to Leo Frank's
poor character, branding the document, witnessed by Detective C. W.
Burke, a forgery. With that, the last of the factory girls whose repudiations
were put forth just ten days earlier had recanted.

Dorsey now moved in a different direction, reading a retraction by Mary
Rich, the Negro lunch-wagon operator who'd declared in an affidavit
for the defense that Jim Conley had emerged from the basement of the
National Pencil factory around 2:20 on April 26, 1913, purchased a meal,
then returned to the building. But as Rich now told it, she had not seen
Conley on the afternoon of Mary Phagan's murder and never made a state-
ment saying she had. This was not, however, because Frank's allies had
failed to seek one. A month or so before the hearings, the woman charged,
a group consisting of C. W. Burke, Rabbi David Marx and Lucille Frank had
approached her and asked that she make an affidavit. "You will take the

412 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

rope from around my husband's neck," Rich claimed Lucille had said. She
added that she'd replied, "I can't tell a lie like that," and had thought no
more of the encounter until the newspapers reported that a statement
attributed to her was part of the extraordinary motion.

Dorsey next read a statement by Helen Ferguson, which, while not a
retraction of her affidavit for the defense, provided yet another damaging
account of the tactics that Burns's agents allegedly employed in securing
such affidavits. As the girl now told it, Jimmy Wrenn, operating under the
alias J. W. Howard, had approached her several months earlier and invited
her to the movies. Following a couple of dates, he introduced her to a man he
said was his father but who she later learned was C. W. Burke. He asked her
to renounce her testimony concerning Frank's purported refusal to give her
Mary Phagan's wages. Though she said she answered no, Wrenn and Burke
apparently continued to court her. "They said Frank was an innocent man.
Jimmy said, 'I'd hate to be the main one to put the rope around his neck.' "
She maintained that she again stood her ground, although she confirmed
she'd told the men that she was scared of Conley. The detectives' efforts
came to a conclusion when Wrenn overplayed his hand. "Jimmy tried to kiss
me, and I hit him in the mouth," the girl declared, adding: "That seemed to
cool him down. I haven't seen him since."

Significant as the Rich and Ferguson statements were to Dorsey's overall
attack, they were, in the end, random sorties before another big push, this
one aimed at destroying a portion of the extraordinary motion that had
seemed unassailable.

Dorsey opened his assault on Henry Alexander's finding that the murder
notes had been written by Conley on paper found in the factory basement
by reading a certified copy of an Atlanta city ordinance prohibiting the stor-
age of combustible materials for longer than six hours in any area of a
building deemed a fire zone.

Against this backdrop, Dorsey then presented a number of affidavits
intended to prove that the out-of-date order pads belonging to former
factory mechanic H. F. Becker that Alexander contended provided the
sheet upon which the longer note was composed had never reached the
basement, but had instead been stored in Frank's office. The initial state-
ment to this effect came from Philip Chambers, the onetime office boy who
during the trial was subjected to a grilling by the solicitor suggesting that
he'd been the target of the superintendent's homosexual overtures. Accord-
ing to Chambers, he had been present when Becker's desk, following the
mechanic's last day at work, was moved to Frank's office. At the same time,
the boy asserted, Becker's supplies, including order pads and carbon sheets,
were put in a nearby closet. "No trash, books or papers were ever left piled
in the basement," Chambers swore.

DARKNESS FALLS 413

As corroboration for Chambers's affidavit, Dorsey next read a statement
by the early suspect— and longtime Frank nemesis— James M. Gantt. As
the fired factory bookkeeper told it, not only had he, too, been present the
day Becker's desk was moved, but he'd helped place the relevant order
pads in the closet adjacent to the superintendent's office. He also swore that
as of his own last day at work— April 4, 1913— the pads were exactly where
he'd left them.

Once he had put on the record the affidavits asserting that the order
pads had been kept where Conley said they were, Dorsey produced a state-
ment declaring that such pads had not been kept where Alexander said
they were. As Atlanta fire inspector H.W. Otis told it, he frequently checked
the plant, paying special attention to the area around the furnace where
Mary Phagan's body was discovered. Between January 1, 1913, and the day
of the murder, he said he'd twice ordered this area cleaned and had heard
Frank instruct employees to do so. He was "personally positive" that no
pads or paper were in the basement at the time of the crime.

The concluding element in Dorsey's attack on Alexander's determina-
tions was aimed at their most credible— or at least most scientific— under-
pinning: the photographic analysis suggesting that the preprinted sheet
upon which the longer note was written was a carbon of an order placed by
Becker in 1909. Alexander had, of course, based his conclusion on the fact
that the high-quality reproduction of the note published in his much
discussed pamphlet revealed the smudgy purchase number "1018." But ac-
cording to the affidavit the solicitor now submitted from photographer
H. M. DeVore, who at the state's request had also photographed the notes
and had used plates that provided even sharper resolution, the actual num-
ber was "18 18." By itself, this discrepancy did not necessarily invalidate
Alexander's larger point, but DeVore followed it up with a devastating
charge. According to the photographer, Alexander had told him that the
print reproduced in his pamphlet had been retouched at the lab. Though
DeVore did not explicitly say so, the intimation was clear— the lawyer had
doctored the image to get the results he wanted.

Having struck a blow that managed both to damage one of the extraor-
dinary motion's main underpinnings and to threaten a lifelong friendship
(Dorsey and Alexander had, of course, been college roommates), the solic-
itor introduced a retraction from J. E. Duffy. Contrary to his affidavit for the
defense, the former factory worker now swore that he had not bled pro-
fusely on the plant's second floor from a cut suffered shortly before the
murder. Sounding an increasingly familiar theme, he said Detectives Burke
and Wrenn had secured the false statement with promises of financial gain
made during a night on the town in a chauffeur-driven limousine. After
reading the portion of the affidavit detailing the trio's perigrinations, the

414 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

solicitor glanced at Rosser and Arnold and in a shot at the slogan Frank had
been appending to his recent utterances cracked: "That was truth on the
run."

Hard upon Duffy's renunciation, Dorsey presented one from a more
critical witness. According to the latest statement of C. Brutus Dalton, his
testimony alleging that Frank was acquainted with the notorious Daisy
Hopkins and had conducted trysts in the pencil factory office while Conley
served as lookout was nothing but the truth. He, too, he contended, had
been lured into the defense camp by the siren song of a fast buck— $100 in
cash and a like amount in railway passes. Had this shadowy figure said no
more, it would have been bad enough, but far from being just a reiteration
of his original accusations, his affidavit contained worrisome new details:

I have on several visits to Leo M. Frank's office seen Frank with girls in his
office, and I have seen Frank play with them, hug them, kiss them and
pinch them ... I saw Frank on two or three occasions take a girl and go to
the back of the room where the dressing room is. On one occasion, Frank
had six bottles of beer and I carried three more bottles to his office ... In
regard to the cot in the basement, I know that Leo Frank knew about it,
because I have heard him speak of it.

In the wake of Dalton's statement, Dorsey unveiled several affidavits
bearing on the Reverend C. B. Ragsdale, which made explicit what had
heretofore been only a vague charge— Dan Lehon was the individual who
had bribed the preacher. The solicitor then launched a concerted campaign
against yet another of the extraordinary motion's principal planks— the
Annie Maude Carter letters.

Dorsey began by reading the affidavit of Fred Perkerson, a recently
released county prisoner who during his time in the Tower had attained
trusty status. During his last weeks behind bars, Perkerson swore, he had
noticed a fellow convict named George Wrenn— brother of Jimmy Wrenn,
the Burns associate implicated in so much wrongdoing— talking with Frank's
lawyers. Following one such meeting, Perkerson charged, Wrenn approached
him, urging that he use his trusty privileges to enter Conley 's cell, then "come
out and declare Conley had confessed to the murder." Predictably, the for-
mer prisoner added, Wrenn promised that there was money in it for him.
Perkerson also alleged that he'd seen Wrenn go into Conley's cell in the com-
pany of Annie Maude Carter. And he said he'd once observed Wrenn hand
Carter a note that she, in turn, gave to Conley.

Dorsey followed Perkerson's affidavit with a statement from another
former prisoner, Frank Reese, who confirmed that George Wrenn had

DARKNESS FALLS 415

made it known inside the Tower that he was in the market for a confession
from Conley. He also declared that Wrenn and Annie Maude Carter
seemed to be in cahoots.

Dorsey's clincher was an affidavit from the man at the center of the
Carter matter— Conley himself. The state's star witness denied that he'd
confessed the crime to the woman. Then, though he admitted that the two
had carried on a correspondence, he affirmed the statements of Perkerson
and Reese charging that George Wrenn had used Annie Maude as a courier
to deliver incriminating letters to him. Finally, he alleged that the guards
at the Tower, in league with Frank's allies, had made him vulnerable to
attempted frame-ups by leaving his cell door unlocked.

Though none of the affidavits Dorsey presented regarding Annie Maude
Carter went so far as to say that Conley was not the author of the salacious
missives the defense believed tied him to Mary Phagan's murder, they indi-
cated that Frank's surrogates had used the woman to entrap him. Conse-
quently, once Judge Hill gaveled Monday's session to a close, he ordered
the defense to return Carter to Atlanta, adding that if the woman was not
produced, her correspondence with Conley and her statement alleging that
he'd confessed to her would be expunged from the new trial bid.

Hugh Dorsey opened Tuesday's session of the hearings by asking the court
to hold Dan Lehon on $1,000 bond pending a grand jury investigation into
the methods that had been used in assembling the extraordinary motion.
The request, which Judge Hill granted, suggested that the solicitor not only
expected to prevail in the present battle but was contemplating subsequent
prosecutions.

Dorsey began his final push by unveiling an affidavit by the woman
whom, it now became clear, William Burns had not gotten out of Atlanta
fast enough. According to Annie Maude Carter's statement to the police,
she had not received any vulgar letters from Conley, and she did not believe
him to be a degenerate. She also declared that in her conversations with
Conley, he had never admitted to murdering Mary Phagan, always main-
taining that Leo Frank was guilty.

Having thus taken a last shot at one of the extraordinary motion's most
sensational elements, Dorsey turned his guns on its only still-unchallenged
stronghold, reading an affidavit by George Epps in which the boy reaf-
firmed his assertion that Mary Phagan had confided her fear of Frank to
him on the day of the murder. He never would have retracted his story, he
said, had not a group of unscrupulous defense operatives whisked him off
to Birmingham, Alabama, where they threatened him into doing so.

4l6 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

With that, Dorsey, believing that he had not only destroyed the sub-
stance of the extraordinary motion but had shown Burns and his men to be
bullying dissemblers, concluded his countershowing.

Despairing as Leo Frank's lawyers were, they came back at Dorsey with
everything they had. No sooner had the solicitor sat down than Leonard
Haas stood up and, reaching into his own stack of affidavits, initiated a
forceful rebuttal.

Haas's first goal was to cast doubt on Dorsey's contention that Albert
McKnight had returned to the state's embrace, and he began by reading
affidavits— two from Burke and Lehon, two from reporters— confirming
McKnight's retraction of his allegation against Frank. The lawyer then read
a statement by steadfast Minola McKnight, who also upheld her husband's
repudiation of his testimony, while adding that she'd been present when he
met Burke and that no money had changed hands.

Haas next sought to undercut Dorsey's claim that the many factory girls
who'd renounced charges of poor character against Frank had likewise
come home. Here again, the lawyer presented affidavits from the pertinent
investigators corroborating the girls' retractions and denying any wrongdo-
ing. Moreover, he introduced statements from two notary publics who'd
witnessed the retractions. Finally, he read the affidavit of a Cincinnati man
who attested to having been present at the Home of the Good Shepherd
when Burke took Dewey Hewell's statement. Declared John C. Conroy:
"She broke down, wept and said she had not sworn to the truth at the Frank
trial. Burke held out no inducement to the girl."

Having thus done what he could to negate Dorsey's assault on a couple
of the extraordinary motion's centerpieces, Haas endeavored to shore up
some of its peripheral realms, reading affidavits from Rabbi Marx, Burke
and Jimmy Wrenn denying any impropriety in, respectively, the obtaining
of Mary Rich's statement, the eliciting of C. B. Dalton's and J. E. Duffy's
retractions, and the securing of Helen Ferguson's statement.

Critical as it was for the defense to repulse Dorsey on all fronts, the core
elements of the new trial bid remained the primary concern, and Haas now
turned to two more of them, beginning by presenting an affidavit from assis-
tant factory superintendent Herbert Schiff supporting Henry Alexander's
findings regarding the paper upon which the murder notes were written.
Contrary to what Chambers and Gantt had told the solicitor, asserted
Schiff, the contents of H. F. Becker's desk— including the all-important
order pads— had been dumped in the basement. That said, Haas took up the
matter of Annie Maude Carter, reading a statement from Rabbi Marx—

DARKNESS FALLS 417

who, it turned out, had been present when defense lawyers secured the
woman's affidavit— attesting to the fact that she had sworn Conley had told
her he was guilty and vowing that she had not been coerced. Haas's final
submission of the day also bore on Carter. According to a study prepared
by James Innis, a Chicago handwriting expert engaged by Albert Lasker to
compare Conley's letters to Carter with the murder notes, the same hand
that penned the letters penned the notes. The determination countered the
state's insinuation that the letters were forgeries.

As Wednesday's session of the hearings began, the greatly diminished pile
of documents atop the defense table made it plain that Haas was nearly
done. Still, several last points needed to be addressed, and the lawyer threw
himself into the job. First, he read a statement by George Wrenn in which
the convict denied taking part in any plot to coerce a confession from Jim
Conley. Then he presented a number of affidavits intended to disprove the
state's charge that George Epps was railroaded into denouncing his asser-
tion that Mary Phagan had been scared of Frank. True, conceded C. W.
Burke, he'd taken the newsboy to Birmingham, yet he'd done so at his
request. "Epps told us he was afraid of John Black and wouldn't make a
statement in Atlanta," stated Burke.

The case in rebuttal thereby complete, closing arguments commenced.
Leading off for the defense was Luther Rosser, but this was not the
obstreperous Rosser who rattled opponents and windows alike. Suffering
from a severe cold, the big man spoke from his chair, his voice no more than
a whisper. Still, there was fire in his words— and obvious disdain for the
duplicitous tactics he believed Dorsey had used to combat the extraordi-
nary motion. For openers, he suggested that the solicitor had threatened
many of the witnesses who'd repudiated their retractions, declaring: "Any-
body who in the least understands human nature knows full well the power
of the state— knows that this power is sufficient to cause a witness who has
changed his testimony to change it back." Rosser devoted most of his ener-
gies, however, to spotlighting the fact that he believed even without any
others required the court to grant Frank a new trial. That fact: the solicitor's
suppression of Dr. Henry F. Harris's finding that the strands of hair discov-
ered on Barrett's lathe did not match those taken from Mary Phagan's
head. Had the physician's determination been known during the original
proceedings, the lawyer insisted, the state could not have bolstered Con-
ley's claim that the murder occurred on the pencil factory's second floor.

4l8 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

And without such bolstering, there would have been no conviction. From
Rosser's vantage, the injustice here was undeniable, and reaching deep into
himself, he raspily concluded:

Your honor, let this point be made before a jury. No judge who ever loved
the right can approve the conduct of those in that hair incident. My brother
Dorsey should have caused Dr. Harris to tell all he knew. I ask your honor
to deal with it in your heart and conscience.

With that, Rosser ceded the floor to Reuben Arnold, but no sooner had
Arnold started to speak than it became clear that the extraordinary motion
was most likely already dead. The moment of revelation came in the midst
of some extended comments by the lawyer on the topic of perjury and
the number of state's witnesses— among them Conley, Dalton, McKnight,
Duffy and Epps— alleged by the defense to have been guilty of the crime.
Before Arnold could complete his point, Judge Hill cut him off, asserting
that under Georgia law, perjured testimony could not serve as the basis
for a new trial unless the accused perjurer had been tried and convicted.
Hearing this, Hugh Dorsey leaped to his feet, announcing that he could cite
a dozen precedents supporting the court. For those in Frank's camp, the
implications were devastating— the mass of retractions in which they'd
placed such faith were legally meaningless. Reeling, Arnold muttered, "You
could not hunt the penitentiary through to find such a set of witnesses as my
friend convicted Frank with." But here, too, Hill stopped him, contending:
"Credibility of witnesses is a matter for the jury. I think you are shut off as
to credibility of witnesses."

With Frank's prospects fading to black before his eyes, Arnold did the
only thing he could do— he jettisoned those aspects of the extraordinary
motion that he believed could no longer help him. Overboard went all of
the retractions, not just those by McKnight, Dalton and Epps but those by
Pettis, Karst and the other factory girls. Also overboard went the charge of
perversion against Conley. The lawyer based this decision in part on Hill's
earlier ruling disallowing Burns's findings as to the condition of Mary Pha-
gan's underwear, but he seemed to be cognizant as well of Tom Watson's
musings on black sexuality:

Burns isn't familiar with the vernacular of our negro, and that is why he
believes Conley is a pervert. I understand he bases his opinion on the vile
language used in Conley's letters. Conley isn't a pervert. There isn't any
perversion in this case. Frank isn't— no one connected with it is. Mary Pha-
gan was killed to slake the bestial lust of a depraved mind. This perversion
business is rot.

DARKNESS FALLS 419

Speaking directly to Judge Hill, Arnold announced that he would now limit
himself to "three physical facts"— the determinations made by Henry
Alexander regarding the order blanks upon which the murder notes were
written; the suppression of Dr. Harris's finding that the hair discovered on
the factory lathe did not match little Mary's; and the Carter letters, which,
while they might not indicate degeneracy, suggested that the forces animat-
ing Conley were sufficient to inspire murder. Asserted Arnold:

Those notes show that Jim Conley is as lustful and bestial a creature as
ever lived in the world. They show that his body and mind were saturated
and absorbed with lust. His original motive may have been robbery, but he
followed it up with lust.

His case thus deflated and disfigured, Arnold returned to his seat.

In the wake of all this, not a lawyer or reporter in the room believed
Judge Hill would find in Frank's favor. And he did not. After informing
Dorsey that no argument from the state was necessary, the judge calmly
and without further reflection denied the extraordinary motion.

Publicly, Leo Frank and his supporters reacted to the news that the new
trial bid had been rejected with a mixture of stoicism, outrage and resolve.
From his cell in the Tower, Lucille at his side, the condemned man told
the Georgian: "I had expected that action. I have nothing more to say but
may later." Meantime, the New York Times condemned the decision, edito-
rializing:

The trial of Leo M. Frank in Atlanta for the murder of Mary Phagan was
from the beginning about everything that a murder trial ought not to be.
Judge Hill of the superior court denied the extraordinary motion for a new
trial, yet it is impossible to feel that the first trial was fair.

As for Frank's lawyers, they promptly vowed to appeal. "We are busy at
work on the bill of exceptions and will carry the motion before the Supreme
Court," announced Reuben Arnold on Wednesday evening.

Behind the scenes, however, the defense team brooded, and discord
erupted anew— particularly in New York. "I have been disgusted at the far-
cical methods to which Burns has resorted," the American Jewish Commit-
tee's Louis Marshall wrote the New York Times's Louis Wiley. "Every one
of his acts has been a burlesque upon modern detective ideas. It is de-
plorable that a case so meritorious as that of Frank should have been
brought to this point of destruction by such ridiculous methods." Marshall

420 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

had similarly harsh words for the condemned man's Atlanta counsel, assert-
ing: "I know that the lawyers in the case have tried their best and have been
devoted to their client, but they have not at all times acted with good judge-
ment." Summing up the mood in Manhattan, Samuel Untermeyer, Mar-
shall's partner, informed Wiley: "I am afraid the whole business has been
terribly botched."

And things would only get worse. As he had intimated, Hugh Dorsey
immediately initiated proceedings against Burns and his operatives. Other
agencies followed suit. By late May the detective was besieged.To begin with,
the Fulton County grand jury indicted Burns and Lehon for subornation of
perjury in the Ragsdale affair. Shortly thereafter, the same body indicted C.W.
Burke and Jimmy Wrenn for their part in obtaining Helen Ferguson's state-
ment. Meanwhile, the Atlanta City Council revoked Burns's license, forcing
the investigator to close his local office. Simultaneously, Lehon and L. P.Whit-
field were convicted of several Frank-related infractions and fined. As for the
allegations of contempt in connection with Annie Maude Carter's removal to
New Orleans, Burns and Lehon caught a break. Upon the woman's return to
Atlanta, Judge Hill ruled that the two had complied with his orders. Not that
the agency's problems were over. Following an angry speech by Chief James
L. Beavers at the convention of the International Association of Police Chiefs,
the organization rescinded Burns's accreditation.

Burns's difficulties in the aftermath of the extraordinary motion's failure
were so extensive that Tom Watson, though delighted by the spectacle,
feared that Georgians might lose sight of the fact that the detective was
merely a pawn of the interests that sought to free Frank. Hence beneath a
front-page banner ("The Frank Case: What Does It Reveal Concerning
Conditions in Georgia?"), the Jeffersonian proclaimed:

Let us not be deceived by the evident intention to make Burns the
scapegoat.

It is not fair. That rascal tried to do what those who hired him brought
him here to do.

What else did Haas expect of him? What else did the Atlanta papers
expect of him? What else did the firm of Rosser, Brandon, Slaton and
Phillips expect of him?

Having thus refocused attention on the genuine culprits, the Sage, citing
that the governor's law office had been a locus of the Burns agents' activi-
ties, added:

There isn't a right-thinking man of us who does not feel troubled because
of Governor Slaton's connection with the lawyers of the defense.

DARKNESS FALLS 421

Like the Cobb County Democratic Committee before him, Watson was
alarmed by the increasingly real prospect that Frank's fate could ultimately
be decided by Luther Rosser's partner.

First, however, there would be another legal battle, one that while begin-
ning in Atlanta would almost surely wend its way to the United States
Supreme Court. The foundation for this challenge had been laid in mid-
April when Albert Lasker engaged a new set of defense lawyers to file a
motion in Fulton County Superior Court asking that Frank's conviction be
set aside on the grounds that his absence from the courtroom when the jury
returned its verdict had deprived him of his constitutional right to due
process. In a lengthy document, John Tye and Henry Peeples elucidated the
incidents both inside and outside the packed arena in which Frank was
tried that led Rosser and Arnold to accede to Judge Leonard Roan's sug-
gestion that their client should stay away at the critical hour. The decision,
the motion added, was made without Frank's knowledge or permission:
"He did not waive said right, nor did he authorize anyone to waive it for
him, nor consent that he not be present."

Hugh Dorsey, of course, vowed to fight the Tye-Peeples Motion (as it
would henceforth be called) and when on June 5, nearly a month after
Frank's new trial bid was rejected, the hearing opened before Judge Ben
Hill in the Thrower Building, fight it he did. Because the solicitor conceded
the point that the factory superintendent was not present to hear the ver-
dict, most of his argument took the form of a demurrer. For starters, he
asserted that the Georgia Supreme Court had already ruled on the issue of
the atmosphere in which the trial was conducted, finding that it was not a
factor. As for the harm Frank had suffered due to his absence, Dorsey
scoffed, declaring that Judge Roan's polling of the jurors had ensured the
verdict's sanctity. Finally, he declared that at the time in question, Rosser
and Arnold had pledged not to appeal on these grounds. "This motion," the
solicitor concluded, "is nothing but a trifling with the court."

Whereupon Dorsey ceded the floor to John Tye, who with his sights
already set on the land's highest tribunal, countered:

Our motion is founded on a constitutional right guaranteed by the Con-
stitution of the United States. It is not trifling with the courts. It is merely
an attempt to restore the rights and privileges that are due every American
citizen. The right is inviolable for an accused man to face the jury and hear
them say whether they stick by their verdict.

After consulting precedents, Judge Hill sustained Dorsey's demurrer,
handing the defense one more loss and making the world that Frank and his
allies inhabited an increasingly dangerous place. Indeed, just nine days after

422 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Hill rendered his decision, in an incident the Constitution understatedly
termed "mysterious," loyal Minola McKnight was knifed across her face.
Despite suffering a five-inch wound, the Negress refused to reveal her
assailant's identity to the police. Whether the attack was a random cutting
or was intended to send a message, no one knew. All that could be said for
certain was that when it came to the subject on which she had so persist-
ently spoken out during the past year, Minola was through talking.

SIXTEEN

A Chaege of Heart

In the aftermath of the Burns debacle and the defense's twin defeats at
the hands of Judge Hill, the fighting briefly halted, as if all involved had
agreed to a cease-fire. With decisions on the appeals of the extraordi-
nary motion and Tye-Peeples rulings not expected until midautumn, the
story not only disappeared from the front pages (between July i and Sep-
tember 30, 1914, the New York Times mentioned the case just twice), but
Tom Watson, with nothing in the news to provoke him, fell silent. As for
Leo Frank, he settled in to what seemed like a pleasant routine. To the
familiar mix of early -morning exercise and evenings with Lucille, he added
a regular bridge game played through the mail with New York Times bridge
writer Florence Irwin, who aside from praising his skills published one of
his hands in an August column. This was a season during which the con-
demned man's cell filled not with legal documents but with letters from
vacationing friends telling of glass-bottom boat trips from Los Angeles to
Santa Catalina Island and of a little hotel in Santa Barbara "fronting on the
ocean, with lawns of green velvet hue and flower beds circling the drive-
ways."

During these outwardly tranquil months, a horrific but unrelated event
occurred. In mid-June, two popular Atlanta sisters— Eloise Nelms Dennis, a
postal clerk, and Beatrice Nelms, a Realtor— disappeared after cashing a
large check. Several weeks later, the women's mother received a note, post-
marked from Texas and purporting to have been written by Eloise, confess-
ing to Beatrice's murder. A nationwide search was initiated— to no avail.
The two seemed simply to have vanished, a fact that caused their friends
at home— among them Jim Conley's lawyer, William Smith, and his wife,
Mary Lou— tremendous concern.

The Smiths were particularly close to the Nelms sisters (Eloise had been
Mary Lou's childhood playmate), so much so that as fears for their safety
mounted, Smith telegraphed an individual who regardless of his question-
able conduct during the upheavals through which Atlanta had just passed
possessed an indisputable record when it came to tracking missing per-
sons—William Burns. Following several communications, the detective
agreed to dispatch agents to hunt for the Nelmses. In return, he asked not

424 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

for a fee but for an unusual favor. As Smith later put it: "He wanted my
promise to work on the Frank matter."

That Burns could entertain even a notion that Smith, who had played
such a large part in Frank's prosecution, might lend a hand in digging up
information beneficial to the defense would have struck most who'd fol-
lowed the case as absurd. Yet notwithstanding the obvious barriers— the
chief one being the lawyer's legal obligations to Conley — and unbeknownst
to all but a few, there were several factors that made the detective's over-
ture more plausible than it initially appeared.

First, among the affidavits submitted by the defense in support of the
extraordinary motion was one secured from Smith. In the document, the
lawyer asserted that prior to Frank's trial, he had witnessed the conversa-
tion between Hugh Dorsey and Dr. Henry F Harris in which the physician
first stated that the hair he'd snipped from Mary Phagan's scalp during his
autopsy did not match that found wrapped around R. P. Barrett's lathe.
Though the revelation had not kept Smith from continuing to assist the
state, it had troubled him. As he would afterward write: "For some reason
not as yet ethically or professionally explained, the prosecuting attorney
called Dr. Harris to testify to other medical matters but failed to cause him
to tell the truth about the hair."

Second, while Smith had from the start believed Conley's account of
little Mary's murder and these many months later believed it still, early on
he had experienced a vague misgiving. There was, as he expressed it,
"something held back by Conley and about which he wanted to talk to
his woman"— the maligned and eventually abandoned Lorena Jones. "He
would not let me know about it and would not let me carry the message to
her." So disturbed was the lawyer by this intimation that in June 1913 he
had approached Atlanta's second-ranking police official, Newport Lanf ord.
Intrigued, the detective chief arranged to place an officer in a crawl space
above Conley's cell and lower the lights, at which point Smith arrived with
Lorena, then departed. The surveillance effort, however, failed when an evi-
dently suspicious Conley struck several matches and discovered that he was
being watched. Smith's role in the operation was never revealed to Conley,
and the two were soon at work preparing for the trial. But the lawyer could
not entirely dismiss from his mind the impulse that had driven him to initi-
ate what he acknowledged was a highly irregular scheme. "I have always
felt that there was something Conley wanted to tell that woman that he
dared not tell me," he subsequently declared. "I have felt that possibly
he wanted to tell her something that she might cover up, some trace of the
crime."

Finally and most important, others besides Burns— among them a

A CHANGE OF HEART 425

revered old friend and a respected new acquaintance— had also urged
Smith to rethink his position.

Berry Benson, who following the untimely death of Smith's parents had
acted as his surrogate father, had made the initial approach. A legendary
Georgia character, the 71 -year-old Augusta resident was not only the author
of a vivid account of his military service during the Civil War (Memoirs of a
Confederate Scout and Sharpshooter), but he had modeled for the city's
Italian marble monument to its Confederate veterans. (Benson's figure
stands even now on a pedestal in the middle of Augusta's central business
district.) The old soldier was more than just an icon. During Reconstruc-
tion, he had taken up accounting and risen to the head of the Georgia-
Carolina branch of the National Auditing and Accounting Company. The
job perfectly fit the man, who enjoyed numbers and puzzles of all types and
spent much of his spare time decoding cryptograms, among them Le Chiffre
Indechiffrable (the undecipherable cipher) used by French and German
intelligence at the turn of the century. Benson believed he'd broken this for-
midable code and was in frequent contact with the United States War
Department as to his work's value to the government. Though Washington
ultimately decided to rely on its own experts, the rejection did not dampen
Benson's enthusiasm for such conundrums. "The harder the problems," he
was fond of saying, "the better I like them." It was this predisposition that
had prompted Benson to delve into the mystery of Mary Phagan's murder,
with an emphasis on the written communications that served as the case's
own Chiffre Indechifferable— the notes found beside the dead girl's body.
After procuring to-scale enlargements of the notes, Benson had used a sur-
veyor's compass to perform a rudimentary but previously unconducted
task— he measured the handwriting on both and the amount of blank space
in their respective top and bottom margins. What he found was startling.
For one, the letters in the note on the pencil company order sheet were fully
a fifth greater in size than those in the one on lined white paper. Moreover,
the note on the order sheet started midway on the page and proceeded in a
hurried rush downward, leaving barely enough room for the last word,
whereas its companion was carefully positioned, giving the appearance of
premeditation. The differences led Benson to deduce that the notes were
not, as opposed to what Conley had testified, written simultaneously but
separately "with some interval of time elapsed." Buttressing this theory was
a small but to Benson critical difference in the notes' compositions. While
the order-sheet note rather carelessly pointed the finger at "a long tall
negro black," the follow-up effort called specific attention to the alleged
perpetrator's skin color by using "black" as an adjective— "a long tall black
negro." As Benson saw it, the coffee-colored Conley, having dashed off the

426 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

initial note in the heated aftermath of the killing, had subsequently and
coolly written the other for the sole purpose of directing the police to some-
one who bore no resemblance to himself. The factory superintendent would
not have seen this need. On the strength of these assessments and several
others ("If Frank had dictated those notes," the former sharpshooter wrote,
"he never would have said 'play like' in the phrase 'play like the night witch
did it.' It is too childish— too niggery. He would have said 'pretend' "), Ben-
son produced an analysis that appeared in the Augusta Chronicle on the
eve of the extraordinary motion hearing. His conclusion: "It is my opinion
that there is not a white man, either north or south of the Mason & Dixon
line, who could have dictated those notes. If Frank did not dictate the notes,
then Conley was the murderer." In the wake of his piece's publication, Ben-
son journeyed to Atlanta for several long discussions with the young lawyer
he regarded as a son.

No sooner had Benson come calling than Smith received a visit from a
recent arrival in Georgia. Colonel James Perry Fyffe, a 49-year-old veteran
of the Spanish- American War who had subsequently worked in both law
enforcement (from 1906 to 1907, he was police chief of the Panama Canal
Zone) and journalism (in the intervening years, he was city editor of the
Chattanooga News), had been hired by Adolph Ochs in the spring of 1914
to cover the Frank case from Atlanta for the New York Times and, in
another indication of the paper's unremitting partisanship, assist William
Burns in compiling evidence that might exonerate the condemned man.
Toward that last and largely secret end, Fyffe had developed a couple of
fresh leads. According to his findings, the Atlanta Police Department, on
top of its other mistakes in investigating the Phagan slaying, had failed to
seek a laboratory test to determine whether the stains Jim Conley had been
spotted washing out of his shirt prior to his arrest were blood or, as Conley
claimed, rust. Furthermore, the squad had not attempted to match the
Negro's fingerprints with those lifted from the plant's basement door— the
portal through which the defense theorized Conley exited after committing
the crime. Stunned as Smith was to learn of these oversights, it was Fyffe 's
insights into another clue— the murder note written on the factory order
blank— that most impressed him. As the lawyer's youngest son, Walter,
would recall years later: "This Chattanooga newspaper man asked Dad to
read the note's first line out loud, the line that goes 'mam that negro fire
down here did this.' Then he said to Dad, 'Don't you see— the line says he
did it down here. If the note was written, as the state contended, in the
office, it would have said "down there." The note was written by Conley in
the basement.' This had a powerful effect upon Dad."

Thus it was that in late June, Smith— though not as yet fully swayed by
the opposition's thinking and still cognizant of his professional commit-

A CHANGE OF HEART 427

ment to Conley— informed Burns that he would indeed revisit the Frank
case. (This even after the Nelms probe ended with the discovery that both
sisters had been murdered outside San Antonio.) And thus it was that the
spacious Lucile Avenue home that the lawyer shared with Mary Lou, their
two children and Caesar, their Saint Bernard-collie mix, would now
become a center of feverish activity. Here, Smith— aided substantially by
his wife— would take a second look at the Phagan murder and conduct an
exhaustive study of the record, all the while keeping in mind a line from
Charles Dickens's novel Little Dorritt: "Let us examine sacredly, to see if a
wrong has been done."

At the beginning of July, Smith visited the National Pencil factory. His goal:
to familiarize himself with the scene of the crime. Upon entering the struc-
ture, the lawyer, who was accompanied by Mary Lou and the children, took
in the oft-discussed details. The elevator, the stairwell behind which Jim
Conley maintained he'd stationed himself, the pervasive darkness— things
were just as he'd imagined. Still, at the sight of the scuttle hole, the words of
the note jotted on the order sheet— "i went to make water and he pushed
me down that hole"— popped into Smith's mind, forcing him to concede
that there was merit to the defense's contention that this was where Mary
Phagan was attacked. From the lobby, the family ascended to the second
floor. Following a tour of the metal room, they stopped in Frank's office.
There, Smith positioned himself in the desk chair and tried to envision what
it would have been like to sit in that place and dictate the notes. As his
daughter would subsequently write: "My father bent over so that his left
cheek touched the spot where the notes would have been written" and pro-
ceeded to count 43 windows in the buildings on the opposite side of Forsyth
Street that offered clear sight lines into the space. The feeling of exposure
gave the lawyer a keen appreciation for another of Rosser and Arnold's
assertions: "My father could not believe that a murderer would bring his
accomplice to so publicly visible a spot." Next, the Smiths took the car into
the basement. After noting the abundance of coal dust and pencil grinds
strewn atop the earthen floor, the lawyer acknowledged that there was
something else Frank's supporters might have right. As he would later put
it: "I can understand how Mary Phagan's face could have been soiled by a
struggle while alive and fighting on the dirt floor of the basement, but I am
unable to understand how it could have happened on the hard wooden sur-
face upstairs." Finally, Smith and his family returned to the lobby. The
lawyer was curious about one more matter, and in an effort to get an
answer, he sent Mary Lou back to the metal room. Long afterward, their
daughter would describe what transpired:

428 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

My mother screamed, as Conley said he had heard Mary scream that
day. Not a sound of my mother's voice reached us, though we were intently
straining to hear her, and anxious to know if Conley had told the truth.

Following his initial round of sleuthing, Smith set up shop in a small study
just off his kitchen. The heart of the operation was a wooden table that held
the beginnings of a Leo Frank archive— chunks of the trial transcript, the
Brief of Evidence, facsimiles of the murder notes and the Annie Maude
Carter letters, and year-old copies of the Journal, the Constitution and the
Georgian. Here, sitting in a straight-back chair, the lawyer embarked on the
next phase of his work.

Though Smith had been in court both when his client took the stand and,
three days later, when he stepped down, he had missed much of the inter-
vening time. (Hugh Dorsey had asked the lawyer to return to his office and
continue the job of running down precedents with which to combat defense
motions.) As a consequence, he needed to verse himself more thoroughly in
what Conley had told the jury before he could move forward. From the first
morning's testimony, Smith gleaned little save for renewed surprise at the
charges of degeneracy — like most, he had not heard them until the trial. Yet
when he got to Rosser's cross-examination, he encountered a series of
statements— all of them involving Conley 's reading abilities— that aston-
ished him. The Negro had, of course, not only contended that he could
barely comprehend the newspapers, but he'd replied to follow-up questions
regarding the spelling of a number of simple words with a string of ortho-
graphic laughers — "dis" for this, "dat" for that, and "kat" for cat. Now Smith,
as he would subsequently put it, was also "forced to smile." It was, however,
a smile of incredulity, for during the months prior to the proceedings, he
had observed Conley devour countless newspaper articles. Most tellingly,
he recalled that the Negro had paid rapt attention to a Georgian piece
reporting the gallery's approving response to the humble locutions Newt
Lee had voiced while he was a witness, particularly his comparison of the
gas jet in the plant basement to a lightning bug: "Has you ever seed one
whut's been hit with a stick? Hit just do shine. Well, dat was dat light." The
recollection caused Smith to consider a sobering possibility: Conley had
"resolved to play as ignorant as Lee, and he had done so for a double
purpose— to make a good impression as a 'dis and dat' negro, such as Lee
was, and in order that he might not be charged that he had gotten his story
from the papers."

Lest he jump to any conclusions, Smith sought independent corrobora-
tion of Conley's actual level of literacy. It did not take long for him to find it.
For openers, there was the May 28, 1913, Georgian— the edition of Hearst's

A CHANGE OF HEART 429

sheet the Negro had read in Newport Lanford's presence prior to making
his second affidavit. Among the words contained in the lead article were
such relatively complex ones as "promptness, terrible, experience, impu-
dent, improvement and arrest." The piece gave the lie to the masquerade
the Negro had staged in court. Smith did not, however, stop here. Of greater
value than any item Conley had been observed to have read would be those
that he admittedly had written. Which was why the lawyer turned to the
murder notes. His purpose: to discover if Conley's spelling was as abjectly
bad as he'd attested. From the opening line of the note jotted on the com-
pany order sheet— "mam that negro fire down here did this"— it became
clear that the answer was no. All told, Conley spelled "this" and "that" cor-
rectly four times in the notes. And these weren't the only communications
in which the Negro acquitted himself well on this count. Smith's search of
the Annie Maude Carter letters produced the following examples:

"if you do right i will try to give you this world"
"well honey this is all right"

"you told me that two hours fucking on your big fat ass would stop all
this talk"

"that made me love you that much more"

Also in the Carter letters, there was this: "if you hold your fat ass on the bot-
tom and make papa go like a kitty cat then you have won a good man." In
brief, while Conley had told Rosser that "cat" started with a "k," in the heat
of his epistolary romance, he'd spelled it properly, too.

Sitting in his study on a midsummer night, Smith for the first time realized
that Conley had misled everyone associated with the prosecution, himself
included, as to the scope of his intelligence. "We thought he was densely
ignorant," the lawyer would later write, "when in fact he is shrewdly cun-
ning." Yet before making the next logical leap, Smith wanted to explore one
final issue. During the trial, the state had maintained that the murder notes
could not have been authored by Conley because they were plainly the
product of "an educated mind." Dipping into Hugh Dorsey's closing argu-
ment, Smith found the salient line, that the solicitor had set up by dramati-
cally indicating Frank:

This man here, by these notes ... by the verbiage and the language and
the context, in trying to fix the crime on another . . . has indelibly fastened
it upon himself.

430 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Dorsey had, of course, grounded his assertion by citing the correct use of
the verb "did" in the notes. ("Mam that negro fire down here did this,"
began one. Ended the other: "that long tall black negro did it by his slef.")
Dorsey was adamant that Conley would in both instances have used
"done." Waving the transcript of the Negro's testimony before the jury, he
had, in fact, roared: "Did and done. It is the difference between education
and ignorance. Old Jim Conley, in his statement, which I hold in my hand,
every time he opened his mouth, he says 'I done it.' " Reading this claim
against the backdrop of his newly heightened awareness of the Negro's lan-
guage skills, Smith couldn't be so sure. Thus once again, he turned to his
archive. And once again, he was stunned. As a scan of the trial record
showed, Conley had consistently used "did" properly:

page 936: "Alright, I will do just as you said and I did as he said."
page 1009: "I can't remember whether I did or not."
page 1014: "I don't know, sir, whether he did or not."
page 1044: "I don't remember what I did."
"I don't know what I did"
"I don't know, sir, what I did the next Saturday."
"The next Saturday I did some watching for him."
page 1 141 : "I did some writing before then."
page 1 153: "I know that I did some writing before then."
page 1270: "Before I went to sleep, which I did"

All told, Conley employed "did" some fifty times during his three days on
the stand. Yet on the chance that the Negro, while speaking correctly, might
not write so well, the lawyer again consulted his source of last resort— the
Annie Maude Carter letters. The results were the same:

"i don't care if you did do it or if you did not"

"if i did not love you . . ."

"but i did not know that you . . ."

And so on until the veil was ripped from Smith's eyes and he found himself
agreeing with Berry Benson that Conley had not only authored the notes
but had murdered Mary Phagan. As the lawyer would subsequently recall:
"I [was] swept into the truth."

In the aftermath of his epiphany, William Smith was obliged to confront the
dilemma that had been there since Burns recruited him. Jim Conley was his
client, the black man to whom he'd pledged "a square deal." While the

A CHANGE OF HEART 431

lawyer, having seen the error of his thinking, could live with the moral ram-
ifications of his change of heart, legally he was not so sure. Hence he turned
to his law books, and what he found suggested that he had more leeway than
he had initially realized. For one, confidentiality considerations did not in
this instance apply. Because he had developed the information that pointed
the finger at Conley through his own investigation (as opposed to from a
private confession by Conley himself) Smith was, in his estimation, "a com-
petent and compellable witness." Then there was the fact that Conley had
already been convicted as an accessory; according to Smith's reading of the
double jeopardy statute, the Negro was thus immune from prosecution for
"the same transaction." Doubtless, the lawyer shaped these interpretations
to his own purposes, but there can be no question that in the end, he
believed that he had exhausted his professional responsibilities to Conley.
No matter how unenviable his position, he was, by his lights, free to act.

Exactly what action Smith would or could take was, however, another
matter. While he was certain that he now knew the true circumstances
of Mary Phagan's murder, the lawyer well understood that a majority of
Georgians— foremost among them Hugh Dorsey— would not be easily per-
suaded to his point of view. If he was ever to convince the authorities that
Conley was guilty, he would have to develop a powerful and comprehensi-
ble proof of his underlying theory that the murder notes were the products
of the Negro's mind. Toward that end, Smith turned to his wife. As an aspir-
ing English teacher who enjoyed diagramming sentences and, like so many
southerners, was a student of black dialect, Mary Lou believed that Conley
possessed a unique verbal fingerprint. The trick would be to demonstrate
that fingerprint's presence in the notes discovered beside little Mary's body,
then establish its pervasiveness in Conley's other known spoken and writ-
ten utterances. As she saw it, everything else would follow. On an early
August evening, the two began.

Sitting opposite each other at the wooden table in the study off their
kitchen, the Smiths dissected the murder notes by vocabulary and sentence
structure, thereby assembling an inventory of their author's lexicon and a
catalog of his stylistic preferences. All told, the notes contained 63 words,
but after discarding pronouns like "i" and "he" and articles like "a" and
"the," the Smiths were left with 40 nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs that
seemed potentially representative. Similarly, the couple picked out a dozen
grammatical quirks and distinctive phrasings that also appeared to bear
their maker's mark. Which meant that brief as the notes were, they offered
some 52 possible clues as to the identity of the individual who'd conceived
of them.

Hard upon this creation of what amounted to a master list of linguistic
characteristics, the Smiths penciled each of the list's components at the top

432 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

of a separate notecard, then attached the cards with clothespins to lines
they'd strung at the end of the study for both organization and visibility.
Then came the difficult part. The two intended to go through Conley's four
affidavits, the pages of trial transcript containing his testimony, and the
Annie Maude Carter letters. Their purpose: to locate and record each
instance in which the Negro had employed the diction or constructions
they'd pinpointed in the murder notes.

And so almost every night for the remainder of the summer found the
Smiths methodically poring over the collected works of Jim Conley. By
early September, they'd filled so many notecards that the lines hanging
against the far wall sagged from the weight. Here, the couple believed, was
evidence that should be sufficient to persuade anyone.

To begin with, the language used in the murder notes was wholly consis-
tent with the language Conley had used both on the stand and in his per-
sonal communications. Take the word "long," which appeared three times in
the notes ("a long tall negro black" and "a long sleam tall negro" in one; "a
long tall black negro" in the other). In his testimony, Conley had frequently
trotted out the adjective, referring, for instance, to the twine with which
Frank had purportedly strangled Mary Phagan as "a good long wide piece
of cord." In the Carter letters, meanwhile, he had advertised his prodigious
manhood by boasting: "if i could put my sweet long dick in your hipped i
think i could make mama call me papa." And: "if you let papa put his long
ugly dick up in your fat ass . . . then papa will done played hell with you."
Then there was the word "down," which was also employed three times in
the notes ("that negro hire down here did this" and "he push me down that
hole" in one; "he said he would love me land down" in the other). In his tes-
timony, Conley had relied on the adverb so often that after collecting 52
citations (among them: "we come on and went on down the elevator" and
"we carried her out and laid her down"), the Smiths stopped. Time and
again, this is how it went. Just as the noun "negro" was a staple of the notes,
so had it been a staple in Conley's testimony ("the next person that come
on was the negro drayman"). Same thing with "tall" ("she was a tall heavy
built lady") and "hole" (Frank "was looking down in the hole"). Addition-
ally, just as the verb "play" served in the notes as a synonym for sexual inter-
course ("i wright while he play with me"), so had it served in the Carter
letters ("honey if you let papa put his long ugly dick up in your fat ass and
play on your right and left hip then papa will done played hell with you").

The Smiths' findings regarding Conley's modes of expression were even
more conclusive. Consider the phrase "make water," which appeared in the
note jotted on the company order sheet. Black vernacular for the verb "to
urinate," the locution had struck the couple as foreign to anything Leo
Frank could have said. As Smith would later write: "It may be that living in

A CHANGE OF HEART 433

the South all my life, I am unable to speak authoritatively, but I venture
the assertion that the term 'make water' is found a thousand times more
often in the language of Southern negroes than in [that] of white Cornell
alumni." And indeed, a search of the plant superintendent's unsworn state-
ment at the trial and his subsequent written pronouncements had turned up
nothing. However, on page 1264 of the transcript, there materialized the
following remark by Conley relative to his movements on the morning of
Mary Phagan's murder: "I did get up twice and go to the elevator and make
water." On top of this, the predicate form with which the notes' author had
prefaced this bit of slang (the line reads in full: "/ went to make water") also
turned out to be a favorite of Conley's. Again from the official record:

page 954: "/ went to bring her up on my shoulder."

page 954: "/ run my right arm through and went to put it up."

page 957: "/ lit one and went to smoking."

page 960: "/ went down over to the near beer saloon."

All told, the Smiths had enumerated twenty-nine similarities between
the murder notes and Conley's known remarks and writings. Among the
others: Like the notes, the Carter letters lacked all punctuation; like
the notes, the Carter letters lacked any capitalization; like the notes— of
whose 63 words, 95 percent were monosyllabic— the Carter letters con-
sisted chiefly of short nouns and verbs. Moreover, a majority of the mis-
spellings that occurred in the notes ("sleam" for slim, "wright" for write)
also appeared in the Carter letters. Perhaps most indicative, the couple
found that a verbal tic that ran through the notes— the use of compound
adjectives ("long tall black")— also ran through the Negro's testimony
("good long wide" and "little bitta chunky") and the Carter letters ("sweet
long" and "long ugly"). In short, the Smiths felt they had built an over-
whelming case. Yes, they knew that those associated with the prosecution
might respond that Frank had purposely worded the notes so they would
reflect Conley's verbiage and style. But they had a counterargument ready.
As Smith would later put it: "Any sane man must admit that under the
stress and excitement of a murder, Frank could not possibly have dictated
those notes in two and a half minutes (the time Conley says in which the
notes were written) in Conley's language. Even Joel Chandler Harris could
not have done it."

In mid-September, on the strength of the murder-note study, Smith initi-
ated what he hoped would be a series of productive meetings with key
members of the Atlanta Police Department. Over the course of a week, he

434 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

conferred privately with Chiefs James Beavers and Newport Lanford and
Detective John Starnes. Despite the lawyer's evidence, each session went
poorly. Typical was the encounter with Starnes. As Smith would later recall:

In a personal interview with [Starnes] I made the suggestion that the
language of the "death notes" could not possibly be that of Frank's but was
unquestionably of Conley's manufacture.

The reply came that it was the remembrance of this official that Conley
did not claim that Frank dictated the language of the "death notes," but
that Frank merely furnished the ideas written into the notes— that the lan-
guage of the notes was Conley's. This was news to me.

From Smith's perspective, the kindest interpretation to give to Starnes's
response was that he had a poor memory. Upon returning home, the lawyer
and Mary Lou repaired to the little room where they'd spent so much of the
summer, and just as he'd anticipated, the record bore him out. In his affi-
davit of May 24, 1913, Conley had told the police:

he [Frank] gave me a scratch pad and told me what to put on it, and told
me to put on there "dear mother a long tall black negro did this by him-
self;" and he told me to write it two or three times.

For his next meeting, this one with a more critical figure, Smith adopted
a different tack. The lawyer and Hugh Dorsey were, of course, old friends.
Yet even so, Smith— after acquainting the solicitor with his theories— laid
on the flattery and charm. Seventy-five years later, his son Walter would
recall:

Dad told me that he compared Dorsey to a great artist who'd painted a
masterpiece. Then he said he asked him to stand back from his achieve-
ment and consider the fact that beautiful as it was, it was fatally flawed. In
such a case, he said he told him, there was only one thing to do— destroy
the painting. He said Dorsey replied, "It's too late."

The solicitor's version of this discussion is unavailable. What is certain,
however, is that like the others, he also rejected his visitor's entreaties.

Such setbacks notwithstanding, Smith remained undeterred. In fact, the
failures drove him to take a more aggressive stance. If the results of his lan-
guage test did not convince the authorities, maybe some new physical evi-
dence would, and he believed he knew where to get it. As it turned out,
Colonel William Perry Fyffe, the former Chattanooga newsman hired by
Adolph Ochs to look into the Frank case, had not only learned that the

A CHANGE OF HEART 435

police had failed to compare Conley's fingerprints with those found on the
factory's basement door, he'd actually acquired the relevant pieces of the
door. In other words, it was not too late to attempt a match. Thus it was that
shortly after his session, with Dorsey, Smith made his way to the Bellwood
Prison Camp, the county facility where Conley was serving his one-year
sentence. The Negro, unaware of his lawyer's transformation, was happy
to see him and gladly accepted the glass of water he offered. After a brief
talk, Smith retrieved the glass— which now had Conley's prints on it— and
departed. Unfortunately for the lawyer, however, the prints— which he for-
warded to an expert supplied by Burns— were too faint to be of use. There-
fore in late September, Smith returned to the Bellwood camp. This time he
carried with him some fingerprint paper. His plan was to ask Conley to
place his hands on a sheet so that he could measure them for a pair of work
gloves. After all, he'd given the Negro clothes in the past. Why shouldn't he
again? Yet as Conley had so often shown, he was no one's fool. Despite
Smith's earnest appeals, he refused to place his hands on the paper. As Wal-
ter Smith would later tell it: "Conley was wary and wouldn't press his
fingers down."

While Smith had tried to be discreet, by early October he had been mak-
ing the rounds for a month. At headquarters or Dorsey 's office or the prison
camp, someone had leaked what he was saying. Little wonder, then, that on
Friday, October 2, the phone rang at the lawyer's home. A Constitution
reporter was on the line: Had Smith changed his mind as to Leo Frank's
guilt? "No comment," the lawyer replied and hung up. A few minutes later,
though, he called the paper back and read the following statement:

I have never ceased to be a student of the Frank case. Practically all of
my spare time has been devoted to a study of it. I have come to the conclu-
sion—or at least this is my personal judgement— that Leo M. Frank is
innocent and that if a proper cooperation of officials can be secured, I have
absolute faith that the mystery of the death of Mary Phagan will be solved.

Which was why on Saturday morning the Frank case was back on the front
pages. Roared the banner atop the Constitution:

Frank Not Guilty, Believes Conley's Lawyer;
Plans to Obtain Freedom of "Man in Tower"

Not surprisingly, the Georgian accorded the story even bigger play. Pro-
claimed the circus-type topper stripped beneath its masthead:

CONLEY IS GUILTY SAYS HIS LAWYER

436 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

The next day, the New York Times— after nearly four months of silence—
followed suit, booming:

CONLEY, NOT FRANK,
CALLED SLAYER

Attorney Smith Now Convinced

His Negro Client Killed

Mary Phagan

The ink was barely dry on the initial accounts of his about-face before
Smith tried to take control of the already out-of-control story by issuing a
fuller explanation of his thinking. In a statement distributed to all three
Atlanta papers, he began by decrying the news's premature publication:

The unfortunate publicity given my personal opinions as to the Frank
case is much to be regretted. It was never my purpose, unless absolutely
necessary to save human life, to give public expression to my views. In an
effort to inspire further search, I was compelled to speak in confidence to
some in whom I had every right to rely. There has been a give-way some-
where along the line, possibly a willful betrayal in order to accomplish a
thwarting of my purposes and a handicap to my endeavors.

That said, Smith dispensed with the aggrieved tone and laid his cards on the
table. First, he disclosed the potentially damaging particulars— his dealings
with William Burns and his meetings with William Perry Fyffe. Then, in
hopes of fending off charges that he'd forsaken his client, he offered his
interpretation of the double jeopardy statute, asserting that Jim Conley was
now out of harm's way. The ethical conflicts thus addressed, the lawyer
detailed much of what he'd learned in the past months, including that
there'd been no scientific tests conducted on Conley's red-stained shirt and
no comparisons made between the Negro's fingerprints and those found on
the factory's basement door. He also discussed the experiments he and
Mary Lou had conducted at the plant, among them the one that to his mind
proved that a person standing in the entry-level lobby could not have heard
screams coming from the upstairs metal room. Moreover, he articulated an
insight that had just occurred to him regarding one of the trial's less savory
witnesses. "Reading the official record recently, I was amazed to learn that
Conley charged Frank with immorality with Daisy Hopkins," he declared,
adding:

I know Daisy Hopkins, have represented her, have watched and studied
Frank, and I know the types of the two people, their manner of living, their

A CHANGE OF HEART 437

levels in society, their personal appearances, and I know, as much as I can
know anything in life without actually having been present, that Conley's
statements as to this are untrue.

The sole topic on which Smith was not utterly forthcoming was the one at
the core of his work— his determination regarding the authorship of the
murder notes. Though he flatly announced that "upon a comparative study
of the notes with the evidence of Conley and Frank and with the Annie
Maude Carter notes, I conclude that the language of these notes is Con-
ley's," he did not provide any of the supporting documentation that he and
his wife had assembled. Whatever his past dealings with the authorities, the
lawyer wanted to give them another opportunity to consider the material.
"With the loyal and enthusiastic support of Chief Beavers, Chief Lanford
and the men of the police department," he diplomatically predicted, the
truth about the notes "will be made public" and "the responsibility for this
murder will be placed where it belongs."

The response to the disclosure of Smith's dramatic change of heart split
predictably enough right down the middle. Members of the defense camp
were elated by the development. Speaking to reporters from his cell at the
Tower, Leo Frank exclaimed: "It is unnecessary for me to say that I am grat-
ified by the news. I could not believe it at first, for I knew that Mr. Smith had
assisted in obtaining my conviction and I supposed him to be still of the
same mind. But he has been close to Conley, and probably is the only man
in a position to know what part of the negro's story was a fabrication."
Meanwhile, Luther Rosser and Herbert Haas did what they could to
bolster their new comrade's credibility, vowing that they'd exerted no in-
fluence on him: "We believe that these are his honest opinions and that
he is giving them publicity from a sense of justice and conscience." As for
the New York Times, it could already foresee a happy ending, asserting
editorially:

Attorney Smith's announcement that he now is ready to join hands with
the Frank defense and assist this group of celebrated lawyers in working
for the freedom of their client heralds the addition to the Frank support of
the one man who probably can do more than any other in finally clearing
away the last threads of mystery surrounding the murder of Mary Phagan.

Those aligned against Frank all but dismissed this latest turn of events.
Replying to Smith's request that the authorities reconsider his findings
regarding the murder notes, Chief Beavers allowed that as far as he was
concerned, no new evidence had been produced. Hugh Dorsey was likewise
unmoved, declaring:

43^ AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

The state stands right where it did a year ago last August when Leo Frank
was convicted. Nothing has happened which would lead us to alter our the-
ory in the slightest.

Not surprisingly, Jim Conley was dismayed. Talking to reporters from the
yard of the Bellwood Prison Camp, he asserted: "Only a few days ago, Mr.
Smith was out to see me. He always told me he believed I was telling the
truth. It is hard for me to believe that he has said I was guilty of the crime."
On the heels of this remark, the Negro grew angry. "I haven't liked the way
Mr. Smith has acted for the last few weeks," he snapped, apparently refer-
ring to the lawyer's attempt to take his fingerprints. "I am ready to make a
statement to Solicitor Dorsey. I will tell him everything that Mr. Smith said.
I can tell some things against him." Then, in a calm tone, Conley gave utter-
ance to the main point: "I don't care what Mr. Smith says. I am innocent and
Mr. Frank is guilty." Finally, however, the most negative commentary came
from Tom Watson. In the Jeffersonian's October 8 number, he darkly pro-
claimed:

The Leo Frank Case Campaign Opens Again!!!
Of course, all of us knew that it would.

The only question was, Who would Rosser-Arnold-Burns and Haas use
next?

One W.M. Smith.

With that, Watson accused Smith of selling out to the figure who'd been the
source of so much controversy during the last round of hostilities:

According to his own statement, Smith made a deal with the rascally
Burns— Burns the fugitive from justice— that he would help in the Frank
case if [the detective] would help in the Nelms case.

If Smith knew anything that would serve the ends of law and justice,
why did he want pay for it in the way of Burns's services in the Nelms case?

If he already knew something that would establish the innocence of the
Sodomite, why did he demand a price for it?

If there had been no Nelms case to trade on, would he have continued
to keep his knowledge of Conley's sole guilt to himself?

Having thus thrust in the dagger, the Sage twisted it. For one, he suggested
that Smith had never actually represented Conley, referring to him as the
Negro's "nominal lawyer." Similarly, he scoffed at Smith's promised find-
ings regarding the murder notes, terming them "frazzled talk" about a long-
decided question. Then, knowing that many of his readers had likely missed

A CHANGE OF HEART 439

recent issues of the New York Times, he helpfully noted that Smith's pro-
nouncements had prompted the sheet to resume its one-sided coverage.
"Simultaneously with Smith," he reported, "the Ochs paper has opened up
again." All of which served as Watson's preamble to a stern warning: "LET
W. M. SMITH BE CAREFUL!"

The extent to which Watson's attacks on Smith both mirrored and stimu-
lated popular sentiment in Georgia became instantly apparent. Indeed, by
October 8, the lawyer already found himself fending off scores of threaten-
ing calls. As he would subsequently put it, anonymous voices promised "to
do me as [they] did Burns at Marietta" and "to wait on me 500 strong."
Meanwhile, a former political ally publicly suggested that Smith be lynched
at downtown Atlanta's busy Five Points. In an October 7 letter to the
lawyer's partner Aldine Chambers (who was out of town), realtor H. F.
Sanders conveyed a sense of the general mood: "Will Smith is the worst
abused man that it has ever been my fortune or misfortune to know. The
condemnations and curses that are heaped upon him by the public is
enough to damn an angel from heaven." Seventy-five years later, Smith's
daughter would recall her father phoning home one day during this week
and asking her mother to bring his gun to the office. She would also recall
falling asleep at night to the cadence of a policeman walking patrol outside
their home. Ultimately, the atmosphere grew so tense that the lawyer sent
his family to live at a small farmhouse north of the city. Then he went into
the papers with yet another broadside. This time, his purpose was not so
much to explain himself as to fight back.

Beneath the de rigueur headlines (conley's lawyer defies lynching
threat, boomed the Georgian), Smith declared:

It seems absolutely essential at this point that an understanding about
me should be reached— my stock of folk haven't got "much rabbit" in
them. Though I am condemned by every citizen of this town, county and
state as a traitor, a scoundrel, I intend to stick by my guns, figuratively and
literally. I do not intend to be intimidated by cowardly character assassins.

That said, the lawyer confronted the allegation that he'd betrayed his client
for money, asserting:

Many believe that I had my price and got it. All can believe that if they
will. The world is usually so sordid-minded that it is hard to understand
that divine mercy does let a spark linger in some souls, and that there are
men in the world who can rise to just such situations.

440 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Plainly, this is how Smith saw himself. Moreover, he could not fathom why
others weren't equally receptive to second thoughts. "How our officials can
close their minds and rest their hands upon the idea that there is no possi-
bility for further light and study to point out the error [of Frank's con-
viction] is a new theory to me that human justice is infallible." And it was
not just the authorities whose reticence puzzled the lawyer. Addressing all
Atlantans, he charged:

The trouble with the good people of this community is that you haven't
enough sand in your public gizzard that is working properly. There are
thousands of people in this section who have an intelligent belief in
Frank's innocence and are afraid of the howl of a bunch of curbstone theo-
rists who never even saw the inside of the pencil factory and who, if called
upon, can give no intelligent reason for their belief.

Having thereby fired shots over the bow not just of Beavers, Lanford and
Dorsey but of the citizenry at large, Smith drew a line in the sand:

Just tell the folks that there is one man on the job who does not intend
to be bluffed. Whatever it takes to bear a man's part I have got it. This is
not bragging, but just a plain cold statement. I am doing business at the
same old stand, not much business, but what I have I am there to attend to.

Whenever any of the boys start my way with the rope, kindly suggest
that they would do well to first inquire as to my record as a "sharpshooter"
from the Adjutant General's office or of any shooting gallery in the city of
Atlanta, and ease it to them that my specialty is rapid-fire work at moving
targets . . . Counsel them as the Sage of McDuffie does me: "Be careful."

Heartfelt but self-righteous, soaring but vainglorious, Smith's defiant
remarks were nothing if not provocative. And though they doubtless galva-
nized Frank partisans, in the end they chiefly served to goad Tom Watson
into hurling an even more brutal return volley. This time, the weapon was
one of the nastiest in the Sage's arsenal— ridicule. Mocked the banner atop
the Jeffersonian's October 15 edition:

The Frank Case Brings in Another Horse—
A Smaller One Than Usual

"As long as a donkey refrains from trying to make music, one never knows
what his bray may sound like," Watson began, "but the moment he tries to
waste his sweetness on the desert air, we know that another ass is in our

A CHANGE OF HEART 441

midst. Poor little William M. Smith!" And it only got worse. In a line-by-line
analysis of the lawyer's last statement, Watson did everything but hoot and
hiss. Referring to Smith's boast that his inlaws didn't have "much rabbit" in
them, he noted:

By this, he means that he is brave, fearless, pugnacious, bellicose, com-
bative, courageous, dauntless, heroic, war-like.

The rabbit runs away, as Burns fled from Marietta, but Smith is a horse
of another color, and Smith will never run.

Thus we have a picture of Smith drawn by Smith himself, and we know
that he possesses sand.

We know it because Smith says so— and if Smith doesn't know, who
does?

Regarding Smith's claim that he'd been motivated not by the prospect of
financial gain but by a "spark of divine mercy," Watson assayed:

As an unworthy part of "the world" which Smith has such a poor opin-
ion of, I take off my hat, right now, and apologize to Smith for being alive.

I don't feel that any ordinary human being has any real right to be inhal-
ing the same air with Smith.

Then, feigning sympathy for Frank's longtime counsel, the Sage inquired:

Where were Reub Arnold, Luther Rosser and Haas, Haas & Haas when
Smith was giving out [this] idiotic card?

His adversary thus derided and dispatched, Watson raised what to him was
the main issue: "The pure little Gentile victim is dust in the grave, while the
Sodomite who took her sweet young life basks in the warmth of Today, the
be-flowered pet of newspapers, lawyers, detectives and philanthropists."
And he posed the main question: "Is there never to be an end of the Frank
case? Is he the one criminal for whom the laws, the courts, and the people
must make an entirely new system?"

The ferocity of Watson's fusillade shook Smith, but he could not have been
surprised by it. He was, however, caught off guard by criticism that came
concurrently from another quarter— the bar. Though Smith believed that
he'd positioned Jim Conley out of legal danger, hence fulfilling his profes-
sional obligations, his fellow practitioners were not so certain. Many felt

44 2 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

that even if the Negro could not be tried for Mary Phagan's murder, he
could be tried for perjury, itself a serious crime. Yet even more significant,
the consensus was that no matter the circumstances, for a lawyer to turn
against a client was simply unconscionable. Locally, the forum for such sen-
timents was the annual Atlanta Law School Banquet, which happened to be
taking place at the Winecoff Hotel in October. There, Robert Troutman, a
recent graduate of Columbia University Law School who was in the
process of forming what would become a top silk-stocking firm, articulated
the prevailing view of Smith, telling his audience:

Among the important principles that should be sustained by the bar is
the principle that a lawyer should stick by his client through thick and thin
after he has accepted a case. He has no right to parade his opinion one way
or another as to his client's guilt. A lawyer is not retained to express any
opinion or belief. He is retained to provide his client all legitimate means
of defense.

Nationally, the forum was the New York Times Magazine, which framed the
debate with the headline: should a lawyer betray a client to save
innocent man? Notwithstanding the paper's advocacy of Frank's cause,
its editors gave prominent play to the criticisms of Smith voiced by the emi-
nences interviewed. True, several accorded the Atlantan the benefit of the
doubt. Harlan Fiske Stone, dean of Columbia University Law School and
a future chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, maintained that
as long as Smith had not acted based on anything revealed to him in
confidence by Conley, he was governed only by "personal consideration
and conscience" and therefore had been free to speak. Others, however,
believed that Smith had erred. D. Cady Herrick, formerly a New York trial
judge, dismissed the notion that a lawyer could arrive at an independent
assessment of someone he'd represented. "Facts found on investigation by
the attorney are usually based on talks with his client," he contended. "The
investigation would never have been made if it were not for the relation of
lawyer and client. I cannot see that there is any distinction as far as the seal
of silence is concerned." Francis W. Aymar, a professor at New York Uni-
versity Law School, was even firmer:

I think that the client should have the right to come with absolute free-
dom to his lawyer and discuss his case in all its phases, even to the extent of
confessing guilt for the crime, and that the client should be protected in all
the statements he makes. I believe it to be unjust to the client to permit the
seal of silence to be removed from the lawyer's lips under any circum-
stance.

A CHANGE OF HEART 443

Thus it was that as autumn, with its morning frosts and evening wood
smoke, came to Atlanta, Smith found himself a maligned and embattled
man. As he made his way each day between home and his downtown office,
he would walk briskly, sticking to the middle of the sidewalk— the better to
frustrate would-be assailants intent on either grabbing him from an alley or
pulling him from the curb into a slowly moving car. Passing acquaintances
received only a nod. And as a last resort, there was the pistol, now tucked
constantly in a jacket pocket. Yet the lawyer had few regrets. "Regardless of
public conjecture," he informed a reporter, "there is a personal conscious-
ness of which I am proud. The same spirit for the right that led me to dis-
charge my duty for Conley drove me to learn the truth about this crime."
Years later, Smith's son would add: "You know, Dad felt responsible for
Frank's conviction— as responsible as Dorsey. So once he'd realized his
error, he was adamant about seeing the thing through." Just what the effort
would entail depended on the rulings soon to be handed down by the Geor-
gia Supreme Court. Should that body uphold the lower courts, Frank's
counsel intended to make great use of the lawyer. Declared Leonard Haas:

If the decisions are adverse to Frank, there will be but one other course
open— application for a pardon or commutation before the governor and
the pardoning board. Then it will be possible for us to present Mr. Smith's
evidence.

SEVENTEEN

Cause Celebre

Though the envelope that arrived at Leo Frank's cell on a cold morn-
ing the first week of December 1914 bore a postmark from the
unprepossessing town of East Orange, New Jersey, its contents
could not have been more fabulous had it been stamped "Marrakesh" or
"Kathmandu." "I want to tell you a few things that are going to happen,"
began the letter from the noted muckraker Christopher Powell Connolly,
an East Orange resident. Collier's Weekly, he announced, would devote
parts of two upcoming issues to his 18,000-word article on the factory
superintendent's case. Moreover, the influential magazine intended to dis-
tribute the piece to 10,000 newspapers "with permission to print in full."
Connolly, like his famous confrere Lincoln Steffens, generally took sides in
what he wrote, and in this instance he had aligned himself with the defense.
As he declared up top: "What I want to do is to have this whole situation
reopened in such a way that it will be tried by an audience composed of the
people of the United States, prepared to listen calmly to its presentation
and to your absolute vindication on the facts."

Had Connolly stopped here, Frank, who was beginning his second winter
of incarceration in the Fulton County Tower, would have had ample reason
to rejoice, but there was more. "I have in mind a public protest meeting in
Carnegie Hall in New York— a dignified meeting and not a Northern or
sectional meeting at all, but a meeting in which we can get some Southern
men of prominence to take part, and I will take that meeting in hand and
put them over the hurdles of this case. By that time we will have every edi-
tor in New York interested and we will see that they are there. The effect
ought to be felt and will be felt" across the country.

In sum, Connolly was assuming the position of point man in a soon-to-be
launched nationwide public relations campaign to save Frank from the gal-
lows. In closing, he vowed: "I have plans— we all have plans— which cannot
all miscarry. Before we get through every man, woman and child in the
United States will be interested. This is no exaggeration. There are men
behind this proposition who will turn the United States upside down before
any harm comes to you."

The choice of C. P. Connolly, as his well-known byline read, to fire the

CAUSE CELEBRE 445

initial shot in what promised to be a noisy and contentious war was
exceedingly astute. At 51, the New York-born writer was a combative Irish
Catholic who in his early twenties had moved to Montana, studied law
under United States Senator Thomas J.Walsh and risen to become the chief
prosecuting officer for the city of Butte. Along the way, Connolly had dis-
covered that his true interest lay in journalism, and his new home had given
him his first subject— the battles between law and order that occurred in
Montana's copper fields during the late 1890s and early 1900s. Connolly's
1906 series on the topic for McClure's stirred, as the New York Herald Tri-
bune would later report, a "nationwide sensation," rocketing him into the
top ranks of the muckrakers. In 1907, he was Collier's man at the trial of the
International Workers of the World leader William "Big Bill" Haywood for
the murder of Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg. In 191 1, he represented
the same magazine on a bigger story— the proceedings against the McNa-
mara brothers for the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, the case
in which Detective William Burns had played a key role. On every assign-
ment, Connolly formed lasting associations with powerful figures (Hay-
wood's prosecutor, future United States Senator William P. Borah, became
a friend, as did former president Theodore Roosevelt), proving himself
resourceful, ambitious and, within the bounds of his genre's partisan stan-
dards, evenhanded.

The selection of such an accomplished and well-connected writer to
present Frank's case was no accident. Connolly had been handpicked for
the task by Albert D. Lasker. In late September, the Chicago advertising
magnate had written Frank to inquire if Connolly— who had recently re-
turned from a reporting foray to Atlanta— had received the information
needed for the job. In the following weeks, the condemned man's lawyers
maintained a steady correspondence from Atlanta to Chicago and East
Orange, apprising Lasker of the project's progress while providing Con-
nolly with copies of the court documents necessary to flesh out his research.
Frank's counsel were essentially at the muckraker's beck and call, running
down not just stray facts but photographs and— when suitable pictures
were unavailable, as was the case with Lucille Frank— booking studio ses-
sions.

Two days after alerting Frank to the imminent publication in Collier's,
Connolly mailed the galleys of the first installment to Henry Alexander,
with instructions that the lawyer forward them. In a cover note, Alexander
told the condemned man: "I presume he wants you to return the proof
with any suggestion as quickly as possible." Several days later, Alexander
departed for New York to review the manuscript of the second installment.

Frank's excitement regarding the Collier's stories was immense, leading
him to see Connolly as his equivalent of the novelist whose manifesto, J'ac-

446 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

cuse, alerted the world to the plight of another Jewish martyr, Alfred Drey-
fus. "I trust that you may prove to be my 'Zola,' " he wrote Connolly. A
grand comparison, yet it also conveyed desperation. This because, in the
weeks since William Smith's change of heart made headlines, the legal news
had been almost uniformly bad.

On October 14, Frank and his allies were dealt a severe blow. Roared the
Georgian's page-one banner:

LEO FRANK LOSES

The Supreme Court of Georgia had unanimously upheld Judge Benjamin
Hill's denial of the extraordinary motion. The decision was unambiguous:

In view of the nature of the alleged newly discovered evidence on the
basis of which an extraordinary motion for a new trial was made, and the
strong counter showing made by the State in regard to it, there was no
abuse of discretion on the part of the trial judge in refusing to grant a new
trial, nor was there error in overruling the motion on any of the grounds
set out therein.

Frank's supporters tried to remain positive. "I don't think you need feel at
all discouraged," counseled one, adding that the Tye-Peeples motion on the
constitutional issue arising from Frank's absence from court at the reading
of the verdict offered a greater chance of victory. Still, all involved knew
that a door had closed. As the New York Times observed: "This was Frank's
fifth attempt to obtain a retrial or an annullment of the verdict."

On November 14, the defense suffered another reversal. Boomed the
Journal's page-one banner:

LEO M. FRANK LOSES LAST FIGHT IN STATE SUPREME COURT

Georgia's highest judicial body had unanimously upheld Judge Hill's ad-
verse ruling on the constitutional issue raised by the Tye-Peeples motion.
While the court concurred with the defense's claim that Frank should have
been present to receive the jury's decision, it ultimately agreed with Hugh
Dorsey 's contention that his lawyers had not only signed off on the arrange-
ment but had failed to challenge it in a "timely manner." Using the same
language the solicitor had used in his oral argument back in June, the jus-
tices found:

CAUSE CELEBRE 447

It would be a trifling with the court to allow one who has made a motion
for a new trial on over ioo grounds . . . and [had] the motion heard by both
the superior and the supreme courts and after a denial by both courts of
the motion to now come in and by way of a motion to set aside the verdict
include matters which . . . ought to have been included in the motion for a
new trial.

Where a motion for a new trial is made, the defendant must set out all
that is known to him at the time or by reasonable diligence could have
been known by him as grounds for a new trial . . .

We know of no provision in the constitution of the United States or of
this state . . . which gives an accused person the right to disregard the rules
of procedure in a state and demand that he shall move in his own way and
be granted absolute freedom because of an irregularity (if there is one) in
receiving the verdict. If an accused person could make some of his points
of attack on the verdict and reserve other points known to him ... to be
used as grounds for further attacks on the verdict, there would be practi-
cally no end to a criminal case.

Frank and his allies could no longer mask their disappointment. "Well, I
had expected the court to be with me this time," the condemned man told
reporters gathered outside his cell at the Tower. The following morning, the
New York Times noted: "An appeal to the Supreme Court of the United
States is now all that stands between the prisoner and death except Execu-
tive clemency."

On November 20, the Frank camp received its next setback— the Su-
preme Court of Georgia refused to certify a writ of error that would facili-
tate a United States Supreme Court review of the ruling on the Tye-Peeples
motion. The justices were simply "not impressed with the construction
placed upon their previous decision" by the prisoner's counsel, reported the
Journal

Still, several routes over which Frank's case could reach the nation's
highest tribunal remained open. Accordingly, Henry Peeples and Henry
Alexander left Atlanta by train late on the twentieth, checking in the next
day at Washington's new Willard Hotel, two blocks from the White House.
The lawyers, joined by the American Jewish Committee's Louis Marshall,
then took a taxi to the New Hampshire Avenue home of Supreme Court
Justice Joseph R. Lamar, a native of Augusta, Georgia, and the circuit jus-
tice for the Fifth Judicial Circuit, of which Atlanta was a part. To support the
contention that Frank's absence from court when the jury returned its ver-
dict had violated his constitutional rights, they submitted a brief that cited
as a precedent a dissenting opinion penned years before by Lamar himself

448 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

in which he'd argued that in a murder case where the defendant had not
been present to receive an adverse decision, the conviction should have
been set aside. The meeting broke up after an hour and a half, with the jus-
tice agreeing to take the application under advisement, but ultimately he
found that the issue was one of state law and unworthy of review. On
November 23, Lamar denied the request, declaring:

Frank made a motion for a new trial in which the fact of his absence . . .
from the courtroom was not made a ground . . . The Supreme Court of
Georgia, among other things, held that under the laws of Georgia and the
practice of its courts, a motion for a new trial is a proper method by which
to attack a verdict rendered in the prisoner's absence . . . the ruling
involves a matter of state practice and presents no federal question.

Frank received these grim tidings with growing apprehension. Though
friends surrounded him in his cell, his voice trembled when he told the
press: "I thought I deserved a chance. I don't know what will be done now."
On November 26, Frank's lawyers referred their application for review
to a second Supreme Court justice— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the leg-
endary Yankee who had been thrice wounded in the Civil War and was by
1914 a towering figure in legal circles. This time, Alexander alone delivered
the presentation, reasserting the points made before Lamar and bolstering
them with a summary of the trial that emphasized that his client's absence
from court at the reading of the verdict resulted from hostility that had per-
meated the proceedings:

Several times during the trial, a crowd inside and outside the courtroom
applauded when the State scored a point ... On the last day of the trial,
after the case had been submitted to the jury, a loud and boisterous crowd
of several hundred people were standing on the street in front of the Court
House. The crowd cheered the State . . . Indeed, such demonstration finally
actuated the court in making the request of defendant's counsel, Messrs.
Rosser and Arnold, to have defendant and the counsel themselves be
absent at the time the verdict was received in open court, because the
Judge apprehended violence to defendant and counsel and the apprehen-
sion of such violence naturally saturated the minds of the jury so as to
deprive the defendant of a fair and impartial consideration of his case,
which the Constitution of the United States . . . entitled him.

After an hour's contemplation, Holmes, like Lamar before him, declined to
issue the sought-after writ. Asserted the justice: "I am bound by the deci-
sion of the Supreme Court of Georgia. The motion to set aside came too

CAUSE CELEBRE 449

late." The adverse ruling notwithstanding, Holmes entertained misgivings
about what had transpired in Atlanta. Thus elsewhere in his opinion, he
declared:

I understand that I am to assume that the allegations of fact in the
motion to set aside are true. On these facts I very seriously doubt if the
petitioner (Frank) has had due process of law— not on the ground of his
absence when the verdict was rendered so much as because of the trial tak-
ing place in the presence of a hostile demonstration and seemingly danger-
ous crowd, thought by the presiding Judge to be ready for violence unless a
verdict of guilty was rendered.

After an unending series of defeats, this was an exceptional triumph for the
defense. Declared the front-page headline atop the next morning's New
York Times:

JUSTICE TO FRANK DOUBTED BY HOLMES

Inside, the paper that had been at the forefront of the fight for nearly a year
editorialized:

From the lips of Justice Holmes, for the first time in the proceedings
taken after conviction, we have an expression of interest in the human
considerations of this case. Justice Holmes deserves the highest commen-
dation for this human departure from the dry legal formula ... In this
utterance, Justice Holmes gives expression to the thought that is in the
minds of the whole public outside of Atlanta. By these words we are confi-
dent he has saved the life of an innocent man condemned to death because
of the clamor of a community that seemed to have gone mad through pas-
sion and prejudice.

Holmes's remarks regarding the atmosphere in which Frank was tried
prompted an outpouring of comment. The Baltimore Sun, the Milwaukee
Sentinel, the Houston Chronicle, the Washington Star, the Philadelphia
Inquirer, the New York World and dozens of others weighed in. The consen-
sus was that the genuine issue had been lost in a maze of procedural minu-
tiae. Asserted the Boston Journal: "If the man has not had a fair trial he
should have one. The technicalities of law must not be permitted to super-
sede justice." The state that many held responsible for this upside-down
thinking was also roundly criticized. Asked the Louisville Courier-Journal:
"Do the people of Georgia realize that the mob spirit of Atlanta is about to
send a man to execution whose guilt has been by no means proved?" Then

450 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

there were the discourses on race. Hard upon its initial leader, the New
York Times declared: "What is mysterious is that the people of Atlanta,
when they found out the only evidence against Frank, a white man of
upright life and spotless record, was given by a dissolute negro of known
criminal tendencies, did not realize that a grave mistake had been made."
Finally, there was a puzzlement, best expressed by the Albany (New York)
Knickerbocker Press, over what was now to be done:

Is it not an amazing commentary upon our judicial system that an asso-
ciate justice of the United States Supreme Court "seriously doubts if Frank
has had due process of law" and yet there is no means at hand by which
"due process" may be had?

In a lengthy statement released the day after Holmes issued his opinion
and carried in full by newspapers in Atlanta and New York, Leo Frank
sounded many of the same themes. "Can it be that the law, and our system
of its administration, is so inexorable that truth and innocence may never
be heard after the die is cast?" he asked. "Is the door forever closed and the
way barred?" Relatedly, he asserted that the justices who'd overruled his
various appeals had not only never considered the evidence in the case but
that the twelve men who did consider it had been terrorized into their ver-
dict. "Only in one trial was I pronounced guilty, and that was by a jury sur-
rounded by an atmosphere reeking with prejudice and mob violence." The
condemned man followed this observation with a jab at his adopted home-
town: "It is strange to me that a community that boasts of such a dynamic
force for good as the 'Atlanta spirit' should so bloodthirstily desire the
undoing and annihilation of a human life." All of which led to one of those
perorations that in the months since Frank began making pronouncements
had become increasingly common:

That my vindication will eventually come I feel certain. Whether I will
live to see it, I cannot tell. I am human enough to want to live to see it, for
it is my right and due. But I may not. I may suffer death. Still, one thing is
sure. The truth cannot be executed. Vindication may be long in coming, but
it will come. With this knowledge, death itself has little terror for me.

On November 30, in the midst of the resurgent optimism sparked
by Holmes's comments, Frank's counsel once more appeared before the
United States Supreme Court. The request was again for a writ of error, yet
this time it was made not to one justice but to the entire court. The occasion
also marked the emergence of a lawyer who had heretofore kept his

CAUSE CELEBRE 451

involvement in the background— Louis Marshall. With the enthusiastic sup-
port of the condemned man's chief financial backer ("I am glad that Mr.
Marshall is taking hold of the matter," Albert Lasker had recently written
Frank), the American Jewish Committee president had, in truth, assumed
full control of the defense. Looking back over the past weeks, he informed
Henry Alexander: "One of the misfortunes of this case lies in the fact that
there have been too many counsel and that they do not work in unison."
Worse, these representatives were at least partially to blame for the multiple
setbacks. "The federal question could only be discovered" in the requests
made to Lamar and Holmes "by the aid of a high-power magnifying glass,"
Marshall scolded Alexander.

The defense's new application to the United States Supreme Court was
supported by briefs written by both Alexander and Marshall that while
addressing distinct aspects of the case dovetailed into a coherent whole.
Alexander argued that the right to be present throughout a trial simply
could not be waived. His point: Despite Lamar and Holmes's initial deter-
minations, a federal matter was at stake. Marshall, playing to the doubts
expressed by Holmes in the section of his opinion concerning the environ-
ment in which the proceedings occurred, maintained that "the mob" out-
side the building where Frank was tried "paralyzed the judicial function."
The result: "The duly constituted authority, at the most critical moment
of the trial, surrendered its judicial powers." The court, he averred, was
"coerced by threats of violence into denying a right protected by the Con-
stitution."

Four days after the defense reapplied for a writ of error, as national press
attention was rising, Tom Watson returned to the fray. "Leo Frank as a Reg-
ular Newspaper Contributor," read the page-one banner atop the Jefferson-
ian's December 3 number, beneath which the Sage proclaimed:

Never before in the history of this country has any convicted criminal
been given the freedom of the daily papers that Frank has enjoyed.

It is a lonesome week when we are not regaled with several columns of
old hash, freshly warmed over by this filthy and murderous Sodomite.

Simultaneously with the appearance of this stuff in the Georgia papers,
it appears in the Northern papers which are owned by rich Jews.

The Baltimore Sun, owned by Abells; the New York World, owned by
the Pulitzers; the Times owned by Ochs seem to receive Frank's statements
by telegraph at the same time that he hands out copy to the dailies in
Georgia.

45 2 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Watson's ire regarding the distribution given to Frank's utterances was as
nothing compared to his disdain for their content. Regarding the assertion
that no appeals court had considered the evidence in the case, he declared:

Good God! What an arrant falsehood!

The defendant always alleges that the verdict was strongly and decidely
against the evidence.

Therefore, the Supreme Court had to pass on the evidence. The
Supreme Court did pass on the evidence. And the Court did say that the
evidence was sufficient to sustain the verdict.

Then there was Watson's contempt for the opinions articulated by the
newspapers themselves. Honing in on a view expressed most baldly by the
New York Times, he observed:

In the Frank case, the great point emphasized by the Jewish papers is
that the main witness against Frank was a negro!

It seems that negroes are good enough to hold office, sleep in our beds,
eat at our tables, marry our daughters, and mongrelize the Anglo-Saxon
race, but are not good enough to bear testimony against a rich Jew!

The implicit racism of many of the defense's allies was, of course, a fat tar-
get, but Watson did not stop there, indulging in his own appeal to prejudice
by quoting from a book by Edward A. Ross entitled The Old World and
the New: "The fact that pleasure loving Jewish businessmen spare Jewesses,
but PURSUE GENTILE GIRLS excites bitter comment." Whereupon he
exclaimed:

God in Heaven! If Ross had the Frank case in mind, he could not have
hit it harder.

On December 7, less than a week after Watson's reemergence, the
United States Supreme Court rejected the defense's latest request for a
writ of error. There was no opinion, just a one-word decision: "Denied." Yet
when the news reached Frank's cell, he reacted calmly. After all, there was
offsetting reason for cheer. As Henry Alexander had written him a couple
of nights before:

I expect to hear . . . that the motion for leave to file the petition for the
writ of error has been granted. But even if not, I think we have the fight
whipped anyway. Connolly's articles will upheave the country.

CAUSE CELEBRE 453

C. P. Connolly's two-part article on the Leo Frank case in the issues of
Collier's Weekly for December 17 and December 23 was everything Con-
nolly had predicted it would be and all the defense could have wished for.
The first piece opened with a two-page layout dominated by a photograph
of Frank in high collar, suit and tie, clasping a cigar in his hand in the man-
ner of a young titan of industry. This was no murderer, the writer declared
at the outset, but a "shy, nervous intellectual" who "looks through his prison
bars with the eyes of the stoic." Nonetheless, the police had charged the
poor man with Mary Phagan's murder, and Atlanta had demanded his con-
viction and now sought his execution. The reason: "Politics, prejudice, and
perjury."

The most poisonous of these influences, asserted Connolly, was preju-
dice. "In certain parts of the South," he wrote, "there are those who harbor
the medieval picture of the fire-breathing, murderous Jew portrayed by
Marlowe"— in The Jew of Malta, a play thought to have inspired The Mer-
chant of Venice. Georgians had applied this stereotype to Frank, maintained
the muckraker: "On the last day I was in Atlanta I went to the office of one
of Frank's lawyers to say good-by. The telephone rang. Tf they don't hang
that Jew, we'll hang you,' came the message." This phrase— "If they don't
hang that Jew, we'll hang you"— would now enter the popular conscious-
ness, with many of the condemned man's supporters claiming that it had
been chanted by crowds at the trial.

If prejudice led to the initial suspicion of Frank, it was politics, argued
Connolly, that led to what he termed the frame-up. The hostilities between
the newspapers and the police department, the stresses inherent in a city
whose institutions had not kept pace with its growth— the writer pointed
out how these factors had played a part. He was most persuasive, however,
on the role of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Quoting from a new affi-
davit by L. P. Whitfield, the Pinkerton operative who'd always doubted
Frank's guilt and had eventually gone to work for the defense, he reported
that early in the probe Harry Scott, the firm's second in command and
Frank's nemesis, had remarked: "Unless the Jew is convicted, the Pinkerton
Detective Agency [will] have to get out of Atlanta."

Which left perjury. Calling on his years as a prosecutor, Connolly high-
lighted the contradictions in Jim Conley's affidavits and trial statements,
proclaiming: "Frank was convicted solely on Conley's testimony. Without it,
there was no case." Then, in the second installment of his piece— which was
illustrated by a photograph of the pencil factory and portraits of Luther
Rosser and Reuben Arnold— he essentially put the Negro in the dock.
First, he assailed the state's theory of where Mary Phagan had been mur-
dered:

454 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

There was found four corpuscles of "blood"— a mere iota— on the
second floor [of the plant]. The girl was brutally handled and bled freely,
not only from the wound in her head but from other parts of her body . . .
There were cinders and sawdust in the girl's nose and mouth, drawn in in
the act of breathing . . . Her face had been rubbed before death into these
cinders— yet Conley swore that he and Frank carried the body in a "cro-
cus" sack into the cellar.

Next, he asserted— as the defense had long held— that the murder had
occurred in the basement:

Mary Phagan went down the stairway that noon . . . she was in plain
view, with her silver mesh bag in her hand, of this semi-intoxicated, lustful,
improvident, and impecunious negro who lay concealed all that morning in
the shadow of a pile of packing boxes at the foot of the stairway ... At the
foot of the stairway was an elevator shaft which led to the . . . cellar, and
alongside of this elevator shaft was also a trap door— the "hole" referred
to in one of the "murder notes."

And what did Connolly make of the notes? Borrowing from the studies of
Alexander, Smith and Berry Benson, he wrote:

The purpose of the notes . . . was to divert suspicion, which would be
immediately defeated by the handwriting itself, which was not Mary Pha-
gan 's . . . Frank would have known that instantly, but Conley was capable
of no such logic. He placed the pencil and the notes and the pad by the
body to make people believe Mary Phagan had written the notes in the cel-
lar. He thought that the police would recognize it as a negro's crime, and he
makes the notes describe a negro. He knew that the crime occurred in the
basement, and so he picks on the man [William Nolle] who was employed
down there. He never dreamed of the storm of prejudice that would swirl
around Frank and make it so easy for him to say, and be believed, that
Frank had dictated the notes.

The muckraker closed his case against Conley— and his piece— with an
insight revealing that Frank's lawyers, after months of groping to compre-
hend the relevance of the unsavory evidence that had recently been
dubbed "the shit in the shaft," had made a critical breakthrough:

There was a substance found at the bottom of the elevator shaft on Sun-
day which had been left there on Saturday morning. This is undisputed. It
is Conley's own testimony. If the elevator had gone into the basement that

CAUSE CELEBRE 455

Saturday noon [as the Negro had sworn], it would have been crushed. It
was crushed when the elevator was operated on Sunday. This is a physical
fact that cannot be argued away, and which unimpeachably disproves Con-
ley's story.

The defense's response to the Collier's presentation was, predictably,
ecstatic. In a late-December letter to Connolly, Frank termed the pieces
"bully," requesting "two or three dozen for distribution here at the jail." The
condemned man was equally delighted that the stories, as promised, were
widely reprinted across the country. The New York Times, for instance, gave
them nearly a full page.

The response from Tom Watson was, just as predictably, condemna-
tory. Boomed the headline atop the Jeffersonian's December 17 number:
"Another Campaign of Big Money Begins: C. P. Connolly." Watson was furi-
ous that the muckraker had quoted no one connected to the prosecution.
Furthermore, he was outraged that Connolly presented as fact many debat-
able claims, among them that Frank had been convicted solely on Jim Con-
ley's testimony. Such liberties prompted Watson to begin his own review of
the case, adducing details damning to the condemned man. What most
infuriated Watson, however, were the outside forces that were "spending
half-a-million dollars to save the rich Jew from the legal consequences of pre-
meditated and horrible crime" Referring to the wide distribution given to
the Collier's articles, the Sage proclaimed:

Big Money is now using C. P. Connolly as its megaphone. C. P. Connolly
is flooding the country with literature, finely gotten up on glossy paper and
illustrated by a cut of the horribly sensual face of Leo Frank. The purpose
is to divide public opinion, create mawkish sentiment and manufacture a
sympathy which will influence the authorities.

In mid-December, the defense inaugurated a final push to get Frank's
case before the United States Supreme Court. Adding urgency to the effort
was the fact that in the wake of the ultimate defeat of the application for a
writ of error, Judge Benjamin Hill had set January 22, 1915, as a new execu-
tion date. It could all be over in another month.

On December 17, Frank's Atlanta counsel, acting at the behest of Louis
Marshall, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus before Judge William T.
Newman of the United States District Court of the Northern District of
Georgia. The petition drew innovatively upon the Fourteenth Amendment,
which was adopted during Reconstruction to protect the newly freed slaves
from state interference with their fundamental rights as citizens. However,
the amendment's broad language ensuring "due process" and "equal pro-

456 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

tection" for all persons offered the possibility of wider application. Unlike
the precisely defined writ of error, the habeas corpus remedy could trigger
an inquiry into the legality of one's loss of liberty. As of 1914, the ability of a
federal court to use such powers to upset a state court criminal conviction
was unresolved. Thus it was that on December 19, when Henry Alexander
and Henry Peeples presented oral arguments before Newman, they devoted
their energies to defending the validity of the approach. Insisted Alexander:

This matter involves one of the gravest questions that can come before
a federal court. To a large extent it is a new question.

Added Peeples:

We realize, your honor, that on the very threshold here we are met by
the question of difference between an application to the United States
Supreme Court for a writ of error and an application to this court for a writ
of habeas corpus. There is a fundamental difference. The jurisdiction of the
Supreme Court on a writ of error from a state court is very narrow and
restricted. But on a writ of habeas corpus the United States district court
has the discretion and latitude to examine and determine whether a state
court has lost jurisdiction. As I say, the difference is a wide one and a fun-
damental one.

Simultaneous to the filing of its petition in United States District Court
in Atlanta, the defense redoubled its effort to win support for Frank in the
court of popular opinion. The Collier's pieces, as expected, had introduced
the case to the entire nation. "Outside the state of Georgia," Albert Lasker
wrote a friend who'd inquired as to the articles' impact, "the press of the
United States, including the leading papers of every city in the South, are
editorially agitating public sentiment for the unfortunate Frank. Daily, hun-
dreds of papers are editorially crying that Frank's execution would amount
to judicial murder." Not surprisingly, the sheets leading the charge were in
New York. The World was now wholeheartedly in the defense camp. So, too,
the Herald. More significant, William Randolph Hearst's flagship, the Jour-
nal (following in the footsteps of his Atlanta property), had also aligned
itself with the condemned man. "If Frank's life is saved," the chiefs roving
editorial eminence, Arthur Brisbane, wrote Lasker in late December,
"Frank will owe [it] not in least to any one of the lawyers you have paid so
liberally but to W. R. Hearst, a man of real power and of a kindness of heart
that is not appreciated."

The groundswell had started, and Frank's allies were doing everything
within their abilities to see that it spread across America. Yet critical as the

CAUSE CELEBRE 457

Collier's articles and the exertions of such kingmakers as Lasker and Hearst
were to the process, it was Adolph Ochs who ultimately pushed the hardest.
December 1914 found the New York Times in the midst of an all-out drive
of the sort it had never undertaken before. Only three days during the
month did the paper not publish a major article on the Frank case. Some of
its stories, particularly if there was a new development, strove for balance,
but by and large, Ochs's sheet was more interested in disseminating propa-
ganda than in practicing journalism. Beneath such headlines as lawyers

UNITE FOR FRANK, FRIEND'S PLEA FOR FRANK, GEORGIANS URGED TO

plead for frank and Atlanta's mob spirit, the Times'^ news depart-
ment presented a shrill and one-sided picture of the facts. The paper turned
over eight columns to William Burns to promulgate his theories of the Pha-
gan murder, sans comment from Hugh Dorsey and without acknowledging
the detective's partial responsibility for his troubled sojourn in Georgia.
The editorial page hammered the message home as well. In five lengthy
pre-Christmas institutionals (Georgia's justice peculiar, boomed one
topper; innocence not now the issue, another) the Times committed its
influence to the task of creating an atmosphere conducive to a favorable
decision on the defense petition now before the federal court. While the
paper's overseers seemed vaguely cognizant that it might not be politic to
tar all Georgians with the same brush ("Anti-Jewish prejudice had influ-
ence upon some thoughtless minds in Atlanta, but there is not the slightest
reason to suppose that the intelligent people of the city were affected by it,"
conceded one leader), the overriding intention was to arouse indignation
and stimulate action.

By the third week of December, the outrage generated by the Collier's
articles and the daily pronouncements in the Times had started to make
itself manifest. From Philadelphia came news of a planned mass meeting at
the Academy of Music to discuss Frank's conviction and to agitate for jus-
tice. Similar sessions were scheduled in other northern cities, among them
Chicago, where in announcing their intentions, organizers caught the spirit
of the moment: "The Leo M. Frank case can be reckoned among the cause
celebres of the world."

The spectacle of it all struck such a jarring note in Georgia that it was not
just Tom Watson who protested. In a wire to Adolph Ochs, Thomas Loyless,
the moderate editor of the Augusta Chronicle, inquired: "Why have the
Times and other publications so owned and controlled attempted to make
so much out of this Frank case? You slander the people of Georgia when
you undertake to make it appear that Frank's race or religion had anything
whatsoever to do with his conviction."

Yet however heavy-handed the publicity campaign had become, from
the perspective of those calling the shots, events dictated no less. For one,

458 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Judge Newman, without even hearing from Hugh Dorsey, had denied the
petition for a writ of habeas corpus, declaring:

This matter has been tried in the state courts. The state supreme court
held that it did not present a federal question, or, if one had been pre-
sented, that it should have been embodied in the motion for a new trial.

This decision was taken before the justices of the United States
Supreme Court, and Justices Lamar and Holmes held that it was for the
states to determine their method of practice . . . The status of the case
seems to be the same here ... In view of this, I have not the jurisdiction nor
the power to grant the writ.

At a subsequent hearing in Atlanta on December 21, the picture darkened
further. In a bitter speech opposing a defense motion seeking Newman's
certification for an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, Dorsey bru-
tally attacked the foundation of Frank's position:

We abundantly disposed of this allegation of mob violence before Judge
Roan at the time Frank made his motion for a new trial, and we satisfacto-
rily met the allegation before every court in which it has been urged. We
showed by witnesses that none of the alleged demonstrations in the court
room during Frank's trial and none of those alleged to have occurred in
the streets outside the court house ever came to the attention of the jury.

The solicitor then lashed out at the condemned man's lawyers, declaring
that the only explanation for Holmes's comments regarding the hostile
environment in which the trial occurred was that the facts had been misrep-
resented to him. Shortly thereafter, Newman rejected the motion for certi-
fication.

In response, Henry Alexander took issue with Dorsey's allegation that
he had, in effect, lied to a Supreme Court justice. "I challenge the statement
emphatically," he told reporters. "It is unfair to charge that Frank is seeking
favorable action by warping the facts." But be that as it may, the condemned
man's lawyers had no choice but to return to the nation's capital to make a
last-ditch application to an individual who'd already turned them down
once.

At 8 a.m. on the day before Christmas, Louis Marshall stepped off a
train at Washington's Union Station, and by 10 he was again walking
through the front door of Joseph R. Lamar's New Hampshire Avenue
home. But where at the presentation of the petition for a writ of error the
American Jewish Committee president had played merely a supporting
role, he was now Frank's sole representative, the decision having been

CAUSE CELEBRE 459

made that Alexander would remain in Atlanta to prepare an application for
executive clemency should Marshall's mission fail. For an hour, Frank's
lead counsel made an impassioned argument as to why Lamar should over-
rule Judge Newman. To begin with, he cited the points elucidated a month
earlier, asserting that the trial court had lost jurisdiction when the defen-
dant was not present for the reading of the verdict. Then, referring to a new
32-page brief, he adduced the various reasons why the petition for a writ of
habeas corpus confronted the Supreme Court with a genuine federal issue,
one that not only justified a hearing on Frank's behalf but offered the tri-
bunal an opportunity to decide a significant constitutional question with
implications for the entire country. Finally, Marshall bluntly mentioned
the reams of publicity that had been accorded the case, making the claim
that should the Supreme Court fail to consider Frank's plea, the American
people would lose confidence in the body as a fair and impartial broker.
As he later informed his Georgia counterparts: "I made an argumentum ad
hominem and told [Lamar] that the question involved had attracted so
much interest that it meant as much to the Court, and to public confidence
in the administration of justice, as it did to Frank. I flatter myself that it
made an evident impression." Shortly after 12, Marshall emerged into the
early afternoon of a preholiday city emptying by the minute as government
employees rushed home. Around 4, he received a call from Lamar saying
that there would be no decision for at least several days. While a light note
in the justice's voice left Marshall "somewhat encouraged," he briefly con-
templated going over his head to Chief Justice Edward White. But after
weighing the move, he rejected it, telling a friend: "It might come back to
Lamar's ears and he might resent my action." Hence with dusk falling, Mar-
shall returned to the station. "Good cheer to Frank," he wired Atlanta
before departing. Yet for all the lawyer's optimism, as his train sped through
the night toward New York, he pondered a somber Latin phrase— hoc opus,
hie labor est, this is the hard work.

Christmas fell on a Friday in 1914, and over the weekend that followed,
Frank and his supporters awaited Lamar's decision. For the condemned
man, though buoyed by the presence at the Tower not just of Lucille but of
his parents, who were in Atlanta visiting, the hours ticked by with excruciat-
ing slowness. "It is hard for me to see just which way . . . my vindication
will come," he wrote C. P. Connolly. To which the Collier's correspondent
gamely replied: "My dear Leo, I don't blame you for feeling doubtful. You
must remember, however, that the seed is now being planted in your favor.
You will hear from this in good time. I believe you will get some kind of
hearing."

Monday, December 28, dawned cold and cloudy in Atlanta, with Frank's
fate still up in the air, but at midday, Henry Alexander received phenome-

460 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

nal news. Soon enough, the story was on the wires, and extras were on the
streets. Screamed the Journal's gigantic banner:

FRANK APPEAL GRANTED

Echoed the Georgian:

FRANK WINS APPEAL TO SUPREME COURT

Justice Lamar had concurred with Marshall's contention that a vital consti-
tutional issue was at stake. His ruling:

The Supreme Court of the United States has never determined whether
on a trial for murder in a state court, the due process clause of the federal
Constitution guarantees the defendant a right to be present when the ver-
dict is rendered.

Neither has it decided the effect of a final judgement refusing a new
trial in a case where the defendant did not make the fact of his absence
when the verdict was returned a ground of the motion . . .

Nor has it passed upon the effect of its own refusal to grant a writ of
error in a case where an alleged jurisdictional question was presented in a
motion filed at a time not authorized by the practice of the state where the
trial took place.

Such questions are all involved in the present case, and since they have
never been settled by any authoritative ruling by the full court, it cannot be
said that there is such a want of probable cause as to warrant the refusal of
an appeal. That being true, the certificate should be given and the appeal
allowed.

Frank's wife, mother-in-law and parents were with him at the Tower
when word came of Lamar's ruling. Soon thereafter, friends began arriving,
and between smiles and tears, an impromptu party commenced. Noted one
writer: "The cell of Leo Frank looked like the scene of a big reception this
afternoon and tonight." The calmest person present was, characteristically,
the one with the most to celebrate. In part, the condemned man's subdued
reaction reflected the weeks of uncertainty through which he'd just passed.
"His face betrayed the strain of the past month," reported the Georgian.
Eventually, however, Frank's spirits lifted. In a comment alluding to the
hope that events would start to go his way, he told the press: "It is a long
lane that has no turning."

From David Marx's perspective, all credit went to Louis Marshall. "I feel
that I have a right as well as a privilege to express to you my appreciation

CAUSE CELEBRE 461

for the service you are rendering every Jew in the land," the rabbi wrote the
lawyer. Meanwhile, Frank distributed laurels to the men who'd given his
plight notoriety, creating the climate in which Marshall had worked. "In
assuring you of my deep appreciation of the stand you have taken in my
case," he wrote Adolph Ochs on January i, "may I not extend to you my
heartfelt good wishes for a happy New Year? I feel that a more thorough
understanding of the issues in the case among the people throughout the
United States has been brought about to a great extent by the space you so
kindly have given to it." In a letter to Albert Lasker composed on the same
day, the condemned man— while making sure to thank the advertising
magnate— reiterated his praise for the publisher of the New York Times.
Lasker concurred, responding:

I quite agree with you that Mr. Adolph Ochs, through his espousal of
the "cause of an innocent man" largely made possible the progress we have
made.

Yet despite the plaudits and the renewed confidence, Frank and his sup-
porters well understood that they had not achieved a victory so much as
been given an opportunity, and a fragile one at that. Hugh Dorsey had
immediately announced that he would fight the appeal vigorously, and he'd
asked for an expedited hearing. The case would be on the Supreme Court's
February docket. In brief, the defense faced another life-and-death battle.
And like those in the past, it would be fought in multiple arenas. As the con-
demned man wrote C. P. Connolly on New Year's Day: "I feel that the mis-
sionary work to enlighten the people of the true aspects of this case must
not be relaxed."

During the early weeks of 1915, both Frank and his allies used every
avenue to get their version of the story before the American public. On
January 6, A. B. McDonald of the Kansas City Star became the first in a con-
tinuing series of national newspaper reporters to arrive in Atlanta for a sit-
down interview with the now all too loquacious man in the Tower. The
resulting piece advanced the same conclusion as Collier's — Frank had been
railroaded. Hand in hand with the favorable factual presentations came a
bumper crop of like-minded editorials. Predictably, many of them appeared
in the New York Times. Typical was a lengthy essay by a deputy New York
police commissioner published in the paper's magazine. Headlined, frank
is innocent, says george s. Dougherty, the article concluded that "no
testimony of fact or circumstance warranted Frank's conviction." Ochs's
paper was not, however, alone. William Randolph Hearst's morning New

462 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

York American joined in, as did the satirical magazine Puck (published by
Nathan Straus, Jr., son of the Macy's Department Store baron), which inau-
gurated its commentary with a cartoon depicting the states of the union as
passengers in a touring car driven by Uncle Sam riding to the rescue of
Frank just as Georgia was about to string him up. And as if such produc-
tions weren't enough, the condemned man continued his own career as a
polemicist. "Do you care to make a statement in your behalf to be printed
in our newspaper?" asked Victor Morgan, the editor of the Cincinnati Post.
The answer was yes. In the task of fulfilling this assignment and others
like it, Frank was aided substantially by his wife. Every evening, Lucille
departed her husband's cell following their regular visit carrying a folder
containing his handwritten pronouncements and his replies to the increas-
ing number of letters arriving from well-wishers. Then, night after night at
home, she sat at an Underwood typewriter she had purchased several
weeks earlier at the Fielder and Allen Office Supply Company. The next
morning, the condemned man's crisply typed position papers and corre-
spondence, all bearing the initials "Mrs. LMF," would go back to the Tower
for his signature, then by mail to the far reaches of the country.

The impact of this latest wave of publicity was, once more, mixed. Out-
side Georgia, the perception that the state and its citizens were involved in
an anti-Semitic persecution of an innocent man became universal. Com-
menting on the reaction to A. B. McDonald's piece, Jacob Billikopf of
Kansas City wrote Albert Lasker: "Few articles which have appeared in the
Star in recent years have created such a furor." But inside Georgia, the per-
ception that the nation and its Jewish-owned newspapers were involved in
the persecution of a state and its people further hardened. Predictably, Tom
Watson did the most to promulgate the view. Under such page-one banners
as "The Continued Campaign of Slander Against the State of Georgia in the
Frank Case," the Jeffersonian devoted its January and February issues to
deriding the arguments of Frank's "millionaire backers." Citing comments
printed by the Times, the World and— particularly galling since Nathan
Straus, Sr., was a native Georgian— Puck, the Sage proclaimed: "This cam-
paign of lies, abuse, defamation and race hatred gets worse and worse. It
must be costing the Chosen People a lot of money." Had Watson been the
sole local proponent of these opinions, they might have dissipated, but
again, he was not. In mid- January, former Georgia governor Joseph Brown,
in his first public remarks on the subject, took to pages of the Augusta
Chronicle to inquire: "Are we to understand that anybody except a Jew can
be punished for a crime? "There were, to be sure, people in the state who did
not harbor such thoughts, but they generally remained silent. As the Kansas
City Star's McDonald had observed:

CAUSE CELEBRE 463

The managing editor, associate editor, city editor, assistant city editor
and court reporter of an Atlanta newspaper said to me they knew Frank
was entitled to a new trial; his trial was not fair.

"Then why don't you say so?" I asked.

"We dare not; we would be accused of being bought by Jew money,"
they answered.

No one was better attuned to the deepening religious and regional polar-
ities in the Frank affair and the role the outside press played in exacerbat-
ing them than Louis Marshall. "Apparently nothing that may be written
will, under present conditions, affect public sentiment in Georgia" in a pos-
itive way, he advised the condemned man in a despairing January 20 letter.
Yet bemoan this fact though he did, the American Jewish Committee pres-
ident was no longer of a mind to urge fellow Jews to keep quiet, much less
ask his client to cease giving interviews. Marshall understood that Supreme
Court justices read the New York Times and could be influenced by a
national hue and cry. With the case headed back to the capital, he made the
calculated decision that continuing coverage by crusading northern news-
papers was of greater strategic value than not.

Shortly after 2 p.m. on Thursday, February 25, the clerk of the United States
Supreme Court in Washington called the case now known as Frank v. Man-
qum, so identified because under law it was Fulton County sheriff Wheeler
Mangum who had deprived Frank of his liberty. A crowd had turned out to
hear the oral arguments, packing the gallery. Louis Marshall, no stranger to
the historic room with its green marble columns, spoke first:

This court has said that there must be a trial before a competent tribu-
nal. A competent tribunal is one that holds the scales of justice impartially,
that is not swayed by fear or favor. Here, the trial was marked by prejudice
and hostility. Jeers at counsel for Frank were permitted when they lost
a point. The crowd almost trespassed upon the jury box, hanging over
the jury box, and their whispers were heard throughout the courtroom.
Applause greeted the Solicitor General when he appeared at the seat of
justice. Finally, the court asked counsel to meet him in private conference,
and then, upon the insistence of the court that the prisoner might be torn
from the sanctuary of the court and lynched by a mob if he was present
when the verdict was returned, counsel consented to his being absent. The
jury was left to return its verdict to the prosecuting officer and the mob.
They knew what that meant.

464 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Marshall had thus summarized the factual basis for the appeal. When he
attempted to go further, the nine justices— who gazed down from high-
backed leather chairs behind a raised platform— began, as was their custom,
to pepper him with comments and questions. Indicating that he believed the
defendant's waiver of his presence at the ultimate moment was, as the state
had contended, an inconsequential irregularity, 57-year-old Mahlon Pitney,
a New Jersey Republican who had served in Congress, declared: "We have
said that a court may abolish trial by jury, and I do not see why a state may
not abolish one of the incidents to a jury trial."

Replied Marshall: "The right is a Constitutional right. It is part of the
right to be heard."

Whereupon Chief Justice White, a jowly former United States senator
from Louisiana who had fought for the Confederacy, asked: "Is it your argu-
ment that in a jury trial where the accused is not present, he has not been
heard and the trial has been illegal and he must go free?"

Again, Marshall was brief and firm: "The right to be heard includes the
right to be present at the final stages of the trial as well as the earlier
stages."

Unsatisfied, White pressed the issue, inquiring where in the United
States Constitution he might locate such a right. Additionally, he asserted
that from his reading of the evidence, Leo Frank had actually been heard
at length, particularly in his unsworn statement. Then the chief made an
observation that appeared to suggest he felt the matter was more properly
one of local practice. In Louisiana, he said, Roman law still prevailed and
juries returned majority instead of unananimous verdicts. Do you think, he
demanded, that this invalidates all jury verdicts in my state?

Having run into a strong headwind, Marshall changed course, broaching
the other premise upon which the defense's application rested— Frank's
trial had been poisoned from the outset by the threat of hostilities. No
sooner had the lawyer made the assertion than Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,
encouragingly interjected: "I am free to confess that point is one that
impressed me very much." On the strength of this endorsement, Marshall
elucidated the disruptions that had marked the proceedings. Yet disturbing
as the litany of offenses sounded, Pitney was not convinced, wanting to
know whether the state had contested the allegations and whether the
Georgia Supreme Court had considered and dismissed them. Before Mar-
shall could answer, he received another assist from Holmes, who declared
that if what the condemned man's counsel said was true, "it wouldn't matter
if twenty courts had passed on the matter." Nonetheless, Frank's lawyer was
obliged to concede that the lower courts had, in fact, ruled against the
defense's claims regarding the atmosphere in which his client had been
tried, although in the last minutes of the day's session he declared that

CAUSE CELEBRE 465

Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold had "misapprehended the procedure in
the early stages," depriving the appeals court of a full accounting of the
details.

Friday morning saw Marshall again getting resistance from Chief Justice
White, who expressed concern that if the Supreme Court found for Frank,
"any man under sentence in a state court could come to the supreme tribu-
nal for a writ."

"I do not so consider it," said Marshall. "Here is a case involving a ques-
tion of due process of law. It is a case where there is no dispute as to the
facts."

That said, Marshall stressed what to him was a significant distinction. He
was not asking the body to set aside Frank's conviction but to order a new
trial. As he'd informed Henry Alexander several days before:

If the judges [are] confronted with the proposition that the adoption of
our views would mean the unconditional discharge of Frank whether
guilty or innocent, they would struggle very hard against such a conclusion.
On the other hand, if they are satisfied that Frank did not have a fair trial
and that by adopting our jurisdictional theories they can accord him a new
trial, that would be in conformity with modern tendencies in the adminis-
tration of the criminal law, and would go far toward preparing the way for
a favorable reception of our theories.

After Marshall conveyed this vital point to the justices, he threw himself
upon their mercy, concluding: "Unless we have a remedy here, we are help-
less."

Once Marshall sat down, the state— which was represented in this forum
not just by Hugh Dorsey but also by Georgia attorney general Warren
Grice— took issue with almost every point the defense had adduced. "There
was no coercion of the prisoner," insisted Grice. "It was simply the case of a
kind-hearted judge suggesting to counsel that their client remain absent."
The state's chief prosecutor then disparaged the claim that an underlying
bias had infiltrated Frank's trial: "There was no public prejudice against the
defendant at the opening of the trial. Such feeling as was aroused against
him was aroused by the character of the evidence as the trial progressed."
Moreover, on the few occasions during the proceedings when outbursts
occurred, Grice added, Judge Roan promptly put them to a halt.

Dorsey devoted his turn before the tribunal to reiterating the con-
tentions made by Grice and to advancing the view that the disturbing pic-
ture of the trial painted by Marshall was an exaggeration. He termed the
defense lawyer's assertions "an enlargement upon the truth." Then, repeat-
ing the charge he'd made before Judge Newman, the solicitor alleged that

466 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

in their petition for the writ of habeas corpus, Marshall and Henry Alexan-
der had suppressed the fact that the state courts had upheld the prosecu-
tion's claim that no adverse impact resulted from the alleged hostilities
during the Frank proceedings. Dorsey concluded by citing precedents sup-
porting a defendant's right to waive his presence at the reading of a verdict.
In short, utterly divergent accounts had been placed before the court. As
a consequence, it announced that it would reserve its decision, meaning that
there would be no ruling for at least a month, maybe longer. Both the
defense and the state appeared to have advocates on the nine-member
panel, but neither side speculated publicly as to how the justices would
vote. As for Leo Frank, he was optimistic. "I am hopeful of winning," he
wrote C. P. Connolly shortly after the hearing. "I feel very hopeful of a
favorable decision."

During the weeks in which the Supreme Court deliberated, the Frank case
stayed very much alive in the nation's prints. Of the many pieces seeking to
exonerate the condemned man, the most prominent ran in the March num-
ber of Everybody's Magazine, which like Collier's was a primary outlet for
muckrakers. Beneath the headline "Did Leo Frank get JUSTICE?," Arthur
Train, a New York assistant district attorney who traveled in elite social cir-
cles, concluded that "as a matter of logic, the evidence points indubitably to
Conley rather than to Frank." True, Train saw some merit in the state's the-
ories. Moreover, he was repulsed by the condemned man, noting: "Many of
his supporters admit that he is shrewd, cold, egotistical. He is even sus-
pected of rather enjoying the limelight in which he finds himself." Still, the
writer believed that the facts relied upon by the prosecution just didn't add
up. "Why should Frank seek assistance from an unreliable and perhaps
treacherous negro merely to take the body down in the elevator?" he
asked. "Why should he wish to leave a clue as to his confederate's identity
by having him write two notes? Or why, if the notes were written upstairs,
and the body taken down in the elevator, did Frank tell the negro to write
that 'he push me down that hole'? Why 'hole' at all? And what became of
the purse and the money?" So persuasive was Train on all of this that the
New York Times— as it had done with C. P. Connolly's articles— reprinted
excerpts, then followed up with a major editorial, declaring: "Like every
other investigator of this remarkable case not subject to local prejudice and
excitement, Mr. Train has reached the conclusion that Frank is innocent."

Not surprisingly, Tom Watson simply could not let such pronouncements
pass. Responding to the Everybody's piece as well as to several other recent
stories (particularly one that appeared in Joseph Pulitzer's St Louis Post-
Dispatch), the banner stripped across the Jeffersonian's March 25 issue

CAUSE CELEBRE 467

proclaimed: "The Leo Frank Case Still Raging in Northern Papers." In
the accompanying text, Watson scored the "outsiders who cannot or will
not weigh the facts which prove Frank's terrible crime." There also now
appeared in the Sage's remarks a new and menacing tone. After wrapping
up a list of the evidence against Frank, he warned:

// Frank's rich connections keep on lying about this case, SOME-
THING BAD WILL HAPPEN.

On April 19, the United States Supreme Court, by a seven-to-two vote,
upheld Judge Newman's denial of Frank's petition for relief. In a dense and
lengthy decision written by Mahlon Pitney, the lopsided majority found
against the condemned man on every point. The conservative justice, who
broadly interpreted "due process" in rulings invalidating progressive state
laws designed to protect workers, was content to leave "due process" in the
hands of the state when it came to the rights of criminal defendants. Sum-
ming up, Pitney declared:

Frank's allegations of hostile public sentiment and disorder in and
about the courtroom improperly influencing the trial court and the jury
against him have been rejected because found untrue in point of fact upon
evidence presumably justifying that finding and which has not been pro-
duced in the present proceeding. His contention that his lawful rights were
infringed because he was not permitted to be present when the jury ten-
dered its verdict has been set aside because it was waived by his failure to
raise the object in due season when fully cognizant of the fact.

In all of these proceedings the state, through its courts, has retained
jurisdiction over him and accorded to him the fullest right and opportunity
to be heard according to established modes of procedure and now holds
him in custody to pay the penalty of the crime of which he has been
adjudged guilty.

In our opinion, he is not shown to have been deprived of any right guar-
anteed to him by the Fourteenth Amendment or any other provision of the
Constitution or laws of the United States. On the contrary, he has been
convicted and is now held in custody under "due process of the law" within
the meaning of the Constitution. The judgement of the District Court
refusing the application for a writ of habeas corpus is affirmed.

Devastating as Pitney's opinion was, the court was not of one mind.
Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Evans Hughes, a former governor of
New York who in just a few months would resign to run as the Republican
presidential candidate against Woodrow Wilson, then return to the court as

468 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

chief justice, vigorously dissented. In an elegant opinion penned by Holmes
but which read as a joint product as a result of Holmes's suggestion to "put
we for I throughout," the two declared:

Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase "due
process of law," there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental
conception of a fair trial with opportunity to be heard. Mob law does not
become due process of law by securing the assent of a terrorized jury. We
are not speaking of mere disorder, or irregularities in procedure, but of
accounts where the processes of justice are actually subverted. In such a
case, the federal court has jurisdiction to issue the writ . . .

Supposing the alleged facts to be true, it is our duty to declare lynch law
as little valid when practiced by a regularly drawn jury as when adminis-
tered by one elected by a mob intent on death.

Frank was smoking a cigarette when a Georgian reporter arrived at the
Tower with the bad news. Initially, the condemned man could not speak.
After a moment, though, he said, "I am very much disappointed." Then he
began to pace the tiny enclosure that for so long had been his home and
where, just two days earlier, he had turned 31. "I will never suffer the death
penalty," he declared between puffs. "Truth will ultimately prevail." The
reporter wondered whether the prisoner was referring to the next step
in the battle, an appeal for executive clemency. Yet before Frank could
respond, his wife appeared. Unlike at previous dark moments, Lucille was
now composed. As the visitor withdrew, she approached her husband's cell
and reaching her hands between the bars pulled him to her, kissing him on
the cheek.

EIGHTEEN

The morning after the United States Supreme Court delivered its
adverse ruling, Leo Frank's lawyers, in a dramatic bit of stagecraft
revealing that they had long been ready for such an eventuality,
announced that they were in possession of a letter written by Judge Leonard
Roan in which he both reasserted his misgivings as to the condemned man's
guilt and urged executive clemency for him. Under any circumstances, this
revelation would have generated headlines, but what made it a sensation
was the fact that the document's author was dead. The fatigue and sense of
malaise that had plagued Roan prior to Frank's trial had turned out to be a
prelude to a fatal diagnosis— cancer. By late 1914, the disease had spread,
and he was confined to the Berkshire Hills Sanitarium in North Adams,
Massachusetts. There, in December, as both his and Frank's options were
rapidly diminishing, the jurist dictated his final thoughts on the matter to a
secretary, who then typed them up on the sanitarium's stationery. They
read:

Gentlemen: After considering your communication asking that I rec-
ommend clemency in the punishment of Leo M. Frank, I wish to say that at
the proper time I shall ask the prison commission to recommend and the
governor to commute Frank's sentence to life imprisonment . . .

It is possible that I showed undue deference to the opinion of the jury in
this case when I allowed their verdict to stand. They said by their verdict
that they had found the truth. I was still in a state of uncertainty, and so
expressed myself. My search for the truth, though diligent and earnest, has
not been so successful. In the exercise of judicial discretion, restricted and
limited according to my interpretation of the decisions of the reviewing
court, I allowed the jury's verdict to remain undisturbed. I had no way of
knowing it was erroneous.

After many months of continued deliberation, I am still uncertain of
Frank's guilt. The state of uncertainty is largely due to the character of the
negro Conley's testimony, by which the verdict was evidently reached . . .

The execution of any person whose guilt has not been satisfactorily

47° AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

proved to the constituted authorities is too horrible to contemplate . . .
Hence at the proper time I shall express and enlarge upon these views
directly to the governor and the prison commission. However, if for any
cause I am prevented from doing this, you are at liberty to use this
letter at the hearing.

No sooner had the existence of Roan's statement been made public
("the voice from the tomb," the defense christened it) than Frank's lawyers
gathered at Leonard Haas's office in the Fourth National Bank Building, an
Italianate skyscraper on Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta. In atten-
dance were Leonard and Herbert Haas, Henry Alexander and the two men
whose conduct of the trial had increasingly come under fire, Luther Rosser
and Reuben Arnold. Long into the evening, the group debated a difficult
choice: whether to apply for a full pardon for their client or, following the
late judge's lead, to seek merely a commutation of the death sentence.
Though all present were, in the Journal's estimation, "fully confident that
Frank was innocent," they ultimately chose the lesser goal. "This course,"
the paper reported, will be pursued because "the attorneys feel that in the
face of the adverse action of the various courts of appeal they could hardly
hope for a pardon."

The following day, when several of the lawyers who had attended the
previous night's meeting arrived at the Tower to present their plan, they
ran into an unexpected road block— Frank would not agree to it. "I am not
asking for mercy," he snapped. "I am innocent and have been unjustly
convicted. What I want is justice." In response, Alexander and the others
argued that a commutation, far from constituting an admission of guilt,
would buy the prisoner "the opportunity for time and future developments
to prove his innocence." More soberly, they added that they believed this
tack offered the only chance of success. Ultimately, Frank concurred, and
he and his counsel began drafting a petition. Written over the condemned
man's signature, it concluded:

I am absolutely innocent of the crime of which I was convicted. My
death would neither avenge it, nor punish the real perpetrator. I have
no personal knowledge of the crime other than the facts related by me in
my statement made at the trial. Beyond these facts, I know no more than
any other person who was present in the court room and heard the evi-
dence.

Once the application was notarized, it was submitted to the proper author-
ities. The date was April 22, 1915.

COMMUTATION 47I

On the surface, the events that would now unfold were explicitly prescribed
by law. Following the return to Georgia of the mandate from the United
States Supreme Court, a new execution date would be set, and the state
Prison Commission, a three-man body that supervised Georgia's penal
institutions and served as its pardon and parole board, would hold a hear-
ing. After deliberations, the commission would issue a recommendation to
the governor, who would then conduct his own hearing. Typically, the gov-
ernor reached the same conclusion as the Prison Commission, but not
always. In such instances, final authority was vested in the executive.

On another level, the road ahead was murky, with the identity of the key
player in the process up in the air. Because Frank's appeals had taken so
long to wend their way through the courts, what a year before had been the
near certainty that any application for a pardon or commutation would go
to John Slaton was now no certainty at all. In just a few weeks, Slaton would
step down, making way for the newly elected Nathaniel E. Harris. Reported
the New York Times in its May 3 edition:

The case may be handled by Governor Slaton, but it is doubtful. His
term expires in June, and it is believed that the Prison Commission will not
have completed consideration of the case by that time. In fact, it is believed
that the commission will not begin consideration of the case until some
time in June. In that event, Governor-elect Harris will pass on the case.

Thus Frank's lawyers found themselves facing two perplexing questions.
First, which of the executives would be more likely to spare their client's
life? Then, once the initial determination was made, what mechanism could
be set in motion to assure that Frank's petition reached the governor's
office when the right man was in place?

While it was a safe bet that Slaton, due to his partnership with Rosser
and his connections with Atlanta's elite, would be the defense's pick to pass
on Frank's application, the choice was not a foregone conclusion. The sit-
ting governor was not on good terms with all of the condemned man's sup-
porters. Several months earlier, in response to a request by Frank that the
Journal lobby his cause to Slaton, editor James R. Gray replied: "The gov-
ernor is not friendly to this paper. If we should urge him to pardon you or
commute your sentence, I believe it would have an effect directly opposite
to what we wish." Also arguing against putting the matter before Slaton was
his having made it known that he hoped to avoid any conflicts of interest.
As the New York Times reported: "It is understood that Governor Slaton

472 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

would prefer the case to go to Harris. The Governor's attitude is due to the
fact that he is a member of the law firm which defended Frank." Finally, the
condemned man's lawyers simply liked Slaton's successor. Sixty-nine-year-
old Nat Harris, a Confederate veteran and longtime judge from Macon,
was regarded as warmhearted and fair-minded. In fact, the incoming gover-
nor's reputation was such that some thought he was the better candidate.
Observed the Times: "It is an open secret that Frank and his friends would
prefer Harris to make the final disposition of the case."

Yet the crosscurrents and gray areas notwithstanding, in the end, ini-
tial impressions were correct— Slat on was the man the defense ultimately
wanted to decide Frank's fate. For one thing, the governor's remarks on the
topic had been consistently evenhanded. When asked by reporters how he
would handle the petition should it come to him, he had asserted: "I shall be
guided solely by the merits of the case and my own conscience. The ques-
tion is this: If Leo M. Frank is guilty, he ought to be hanged. If he is not
guilty, then he ought to be saved." Moreover, Slaton had made a point of
declaring that the prisoner's religion would have no bearing on his think-
ing. "Frank shall not be a victim of injustice because he is a Jew. I don't want
the impression to go out that the governor of Georgia could not give justice
to a Jew. My own personal feelings toward the Jewish people may be judged
from the fact that Mr. Phillips, my law partner for nineteen years, is a Jew."
Meantime, Harris, while also vowing impartiality, had tailored his com-
ments to a different constituency. "You can just say this for Nat Harris that
if the matter of dealing executive clemency is to be considered by him, the
entire outside world will not be taken into consideration. It is entirely a
Georgia matter, and if I am to consider the case I shall consider it with the
interests of Georgia at heart." Finally, though, it was not what Slaton and
Harris were saying to the press that tipped the balance but what those
inside the highest echelons of Frank's camp were hearing privately from an
informed source. In early May, Arthur Brisbane, William Randolph Hearst's
freewheeling second in command, told Louis Marshall that, as one writer
later put it, "Frank would have a better chance to live if Governor Slaton,
rather than his successor, received his appeal." Marshall believed this con-
clusion to be accurate. After all, not only were Hearst and Slaton politically
allied, but Brisbane had for months been in close contact with Albert
Lasker concerning the case.

Just because Frank's supporters wanted Slaton to pass on the commuta-
tion application did not mean that it would work out that way. If anything,
as news accounts had indicated, the timing seemed to favor the matter end-
ing up on Harris's desk. Traditionally, the United States Supreme Court did
not forward mandates to the lower courts until 30 days after making a rul-
ing, meaning that the soonest the case could be returned to Georgia was

COMMUTATION 473

May 19. By that juncture, the Prison Commission's regular monthly meet-
ing would have concluded. The body's next scheduled session was set for
June 7, fewer than three weeks before Slaton's term expired. Unless excep-
tional steps were taken, the man the defense deemed most likely to show
Frank mercy would not have the opportunity to do so.

Which was why on May 5, Louis Marshall asked the Supreme Court for
the immediate release of the mandate in Frank's case. The high tribunal
sometimes acceded to such requests when they came from the losing party
in an action, and this was one of those times. When reporters in Atlanta
sought Henry Alexander's comment on the move, he professed surprise.
"We have just been notified of the step taken in the Supreme Court," the
lawyer contended. "Frank's local counsel were not advised that the step
was to be taken." That said, Alexander did his best to make it sound as if
the defense had no preference in the matter. "Those representing Frank's
application before the Prison Commission and the governor have no desire
to hasten or retard the hearing before either the commission or the gover-
nor. They wish and expect the application to take the usual and ordinary
course." But despite such a statement, there was nothing usual and ordinary
about what had just transpired— the mandate was coming back to Georgia
a critical fourteen days early.

At 11:35 on the morning of May 10, Leo Frank emerged from a door
behind the bench of Judge Benjamin Hill's courtroom in Atlanta's hand-
some new Fulton County Court House. At the condemned man's side were
Leonard and Herbert Haas, Henry Alexander, Luther Rosser and Reuben
Arnold. Beaming up from a seat at a table situated in front of the packed
gallery was Lucille. Once more, an execution date was being set, and once
more, Frank used the moment to address not just those within his hearing
but the larger audience beyond:

Again, I stand before you. Again, I can but reiterate that I am innocent
of the murder of Mary Phagan. I have absolutely no knowledge of that
tragic occurrence.

My execution will not avenge Mary Phagan's death. A life will have
been taken for a life, but the real culprit will not have paid the penalty. I
will suffer for another's crime.

My trust is in God, who knows that my protestations of innocence are
the truth. At some future date the whole mortal world will realize it.

With that, the condemned man was done, and Hill set June 22 as the date.
Throughout her husband's remarks, Lucille had retained her composure,

474 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

but upon hearing the judge's words, she placed a handkerchief over her
eyes and bit her teeth into her lower lip. Frank, however, never wavered.
Back at the Tower, where Sheriff Wheeler Mangum immediately drove
him, he lingered for a moment on the street smoking a cigarette and talking
to his parents, who'd just arrived in town and would stay for the duration.
Before disappearing into the stone lockup, he kissed his mother and smiled.
Still, there was no doubt that the burden had started to weigh on him. It
showed in his face, which one reporter described as "noticeably pale," and
in a new written statement, which his lawyers distributed shortly after the
hearing and in which he said: "I am fully alive to the fact that my position is
most precarious. It's a situation which is so far removed from anything that
my life and mental attitude could have bespoken. It is so hideous, but at the
same time so unreal, so incongruous." Still, there was a glimmer of hope. As
the Journal noted in its account of Hill's hearing: "With the fixing of June 22
as the date of execution, it became certain that Governor Slaton would be
called upon to pass upon the case. Governor Slaton does not go out of office
until Saturday, June 26."

Even as the defense was inaugurating its last round of legal maneuvers, it
was also launching its final publicity push. The campaign began on a glori-
ous spring afternoon when Geraldine Farrar, who was in Atlanta participat-
ing in the Metropolitan Opera's annual Southern season, walked into the
Fulton County Tower. At 33, the blue-eyed, black-haired diva was the most
highly acclaimed soprano in America— her portrayal of Cio-Cio-San in
Puccini's Madame Butterfly had recently thrilled New York audiences. As if
this weren't enough, she was on her way to becoming a movie star. As Far-
rar's fans, called "Gerry-flappers," already knew, she would soon travel by
private train car to Hollywood. There, Samuel Goldwyn would cast her in
Maria Rose opposite another rising talent, dashing Wallace Reid, and Cecil
B. DeMille would direct her in his groundbreaking epic Joan, the Woman.
For the moment, though, something else was on the performer's mind.
"One of my great anticipations," she told a reporter when discussing her
trip to Georgia, is "to visit Leo Frank."

Farrar almost stopped short while ascending to the Tower's oppressive
cell block. "I had the sensation of nausea, and I wanted to turn back," she
later remarked. But after spending just a few minutes with Frank, she
added, "the disheartening influence of the dark place left me." Declared
the diva:

There is nothing in his outward appearance to be so impressive. It is his
intellect that counts. You would perhaps hardly notice him in a crowd, but

COMMUTATION 475

when he speaks you sit and listen. I strove as hard as I could to look upon
him from a completely unprejudiced standpoint, but all the while my con-
viction of his innocence grew upon me, and I finally resigned myself to
total faith in him.

Frank, his wife, who was making her regular late-day call, and their fa-
mous visitor spent an hour together chatting. As it happened, when Leo and
Lucille were courting, they had seen Farrar perform, and they remem-
bered the experience happily. They also discussed the great concert halls of
Europe, most of which the singer had played and many of which Frank
knew. All the while, Farrar, aside from just listening, made mental notes
about everything from the condemned man's attitude toward death ("He
has no more idea of dying than I have. Even now, he is studying for his
future") to the manner in which he and Lucille related:

There is poignant pathos in the grief of his wife. Her hand went through
the bars to rest on his all the while we chatted. Deep down in her heart
there is sorrow untold, but when he takes hold of her fingers and glances
into her eyes a smile brightens her face.

As dusk neared, Farrar bid the couple farewell and emerged to meet the
press. "One might hear everything that could possibly be considered a
detriment to Frank's case," she said, "but to sit and talk with him would con-
vince even the most callous of his innocence." After making a few similar
comments, Farrar went to a telegraph office, where she dashed off a wire to
the New York Times. In it, she gave a description of all she had seen and felt
while unequivocally stating her belief that the condemned man was inca-
pable of murder. As a result, newspaper readers not just in Atlanta but in
the North as well awakened the next morning to a new type of propaganda.
Now, instead of a lawyer or magazine writer speaking out on the case, it was
the beautiful creature Samuel Goldwyn decreed the nation's most glam-
orous woman. Proclaimed the Constitution's above-the-fold topper:

Leo Frank An Innocent Man

Declares Geraldine Farrar

After Visit to Tower Cell

In the wake of Farrar 's widely reported endorsement— and in reaction to
the Prison Commission's announcement that it would take up the commu-
tation petition at a special May 31 session— the pro-Frank drumbeat inten-
sified. Though there was a lull after the May 7 sinking of the Cunard liner
Lusitania by a German submarine, as front pages brimmed with accounts of

476 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

the tragedy (1,200 dead, many of them American) and its repercussions
which made the United States's entry into the conflict that would become
World War I nearly inevitable — the very vastness of the chaos rising up from
Europe in the end acted only to increase interest in the factory superinten-
dent's fate. When explaining why the New York-based Women's Peace Soci-
ety had turned its attention from the fighting overseas to the battle coming
to a head in Atlanta, Mrs. Desmond Adams, the group's secretary, reveal-
ingly stated: "We first thought of trying to stop the war, but that seemed
impossible" and hence "we focused our attention on matters at home, and
the life which it seemed ought to be saved was that of Leo M. Frank."

And so somewhere in America on every day of May 191 5 someone
was either circulating a petition asking that Georgia authorities commute
Frank's death sentence, making a speech demanding the same or from the
pulpits of both temples and churches praying for divine intervention. New
York City was predictably a hotbed of such activity. At the corner of Sixth
Avenue and Twenty-third Street beneath a giant banner urgently embla-
zoned do it now. sign petition to save leo frank, lines formed around
the block. The goal was to obtain one million signatures to forward to
Atlanta, and toward that end organizers not only manned booths but dis-
patched school children armed with pencils and sheaves of copy paper to
surrounding neighborhoods. Louis and Rose Perlman of 120 West Twenty-
fifth Street, ages seven and eight, collected 1,500 names in one day. Seven-
year-old Sadie Garfinkle of 237 Seventh Avenue gathered 100 signatures in
under 30 minutes. Across the river in Brooklyn, members of the Leo Frank
Committee were engaged in similar work, as were those in another group in
uptown Manhattan at Seventh Avenue and 126th Street. All the while, the
big guns of the city's journalistic, business and religious establishments
pounded home the need for such labors. The New York Times published
seven pro-Frank editorials during the month. William J. Wollman, director
of the J. S. Bache Brokerage, lent his voice to the fight. So did Stephen S.
Wise, the rabbi of the Free Synagogue, who on May 17 told an overflow
audience at Carnegie Hall: "I do not ask the liberation of Frank at this time.
But until he is proved guilty, he ought not to die." Echoing Wise's plea were
Dr. Madison Peters of the North Baptist Church on Eleventh Street in
Greenwich Village and Dr. Edward Young of the Bedford Prebyterian
Church in Brooklyn.

New York was not the only city where men and women took to the
streets and the lecterns to rally support for Frank. In Chicago, following
mass meetings at the Powers Theater and the Auditorium Hotel, Lester
Bauer, secretary of another Leo Frank Committee, declared May 24 Leo M.
Frank Day. By way of preparation, volunteers carrying petitions canvassed
the Loop and outlying suburbs collecting signatures to send to Atlanta.

COMMUTATION 477

Within a week, 400,000 had committed their names to the cause. Meantime
in Boston, thanks to the lobbying of Alexander Brin, a 21 -year-old reporter
for the Boston Traveler, the agitation was, if anything, even more vigorous.
All month long, the paper published daily coupons addressed to Governor
Slaton.They read: "The undersigned believe that there is strong doubt as to
the guilt of Leo Frank. We hereby respectfully petition you to commute his
sentence." By May 26, the Traveler's drive had generated 200,000 signatures
and stirred so much interest that a capacity crowd thronged historic Faneuil
Hall to hear a lineup of revered New Englanders ask Georgia officials to
spare the condemned man's life. For the most part, the addresses were sober
and thoughtful, but one was confrontational. To raucous cheers, Boston's
colorful mayor, James M. Curley, roared:

We want to say to Tom Watson from Faneuil Hall that every man in the
United States is entitled to justice without distinction of race or creed or
color. And we want to say that the organ of Tom Watson is a disgrace to
newspaperdom.

Simultaneously, Frank's supporters were undertaking a letter-writing
campaign. Most of the notes and telegrams to John Slaton came from ordi-
nary citizens, but thanks to the efforts of such powerful allies as Albert
Lasker, Julius Rosenwald and C. P. Connolly, Georgia's governor received
messages from United States senators representing Connecticut, Idaho, Illi-
nois, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas as well as the governors of Arizona,
Louisiana, Oregon, Michigan, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas and Vir-
ginia. (Two national figures who rejected overtures to participate were the
former presidents William Howard Taft, who turned down a plea from
Rosenwald, and Theodore Roosevelt, who said no to Connolly.) By May 18,
a mammoth box on Slaton's office floor was spilling over with mail. Ulti-
mately, the governor received more than 100,000 requests asking him to
spare the factory superintendent's life.

The climax of the Northern crusade on Frank's behalf came the last week
of May when delegations from Chicago and Boston, one headed by John
O'Connor, chief justice of the Cook County Criminal Court, the other by
former Massachusetts governor Eugene Foss (who owned B. F. Sturtevant,
where Frank had apprenticed after graduating from Cornell), arrived in
Atlanta bearing massive crates of petitions requesting clemency for the
condemned man. Combined with those shipped via railroad express from
New York (two trunks full) as well as such cities as Los Angeles, Cincinnati
and Omaha (where newspapers had printed coupons similar to those that
appeared in the Boston Traveler), the petitions contained over two million
signatures. As the date for the Prison Commission hearing approached,

478 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

America seemed to be speaking as one. As United States Senator John W.
Kern of Indiana put it in a May 28 telegram to Slaton:

I beg you to spare this man's life. He will die a martyr in the estimation
of millions of American citizens if you permit him to be executed.

And it wasn't just Northerners who advocated clemency. In fact, as the
nationwide campaign was hitting high gear, many of the Georgia institu-
tions that a year earlier had supported Frank in his extraordinary-motion
fight again rallied to his side. Twice during the week before the Prison Com-
mission hearing, the Atlanta Journal, its troubled history with Governor
Slaton notwithstanding, called for mercy. In its initial leader ("Commute
Frank's Sentence to Life Imprisonment," declared the headline), the paper
asserted that the framers of Georgia's constitution had invested the execu-
tive with the pardoning power for precisely such cases as this one, "where
all ordinary legal processes had failed." That said, it reiterated the claim
that the trial had been conducted in a poisonous atmosphere. Then, citing
William Smith's change of heart, it charged that "the depraved and drunken
negro" was Mary Phagan's killer. And as for the pro-Frank clamor from the
North, the sheet applauded it as a heartfelt outpouring:

Localities and groups are often moved by gusts of sentiment to inter-
cede in a condemned prisoner's behalf, but that is not the source or char-
acter of this appeal. A few hundred or a few thousand impressionable
persons here and there could be swayed by mere pity, but when hundreds
of thousands of people in every part of the United States reach the same
conclusion and urge the same request, we may be sure that they act upon a
solemn conviction.

Also rejoining the fray was the Confederate veteran Berry Benson, William
Smith's mentor, whose essay pointing to Jim Conley as the author of the
murder notes was now available in pamphlet form. And there were new
advocates as well. Colonel Pendleton Brewster, one of Hugh Dorsey's part-
ners; Hooper Alexander, United States district attorney for the northern
district of Georgia; Robert C. Alston, former president of the Georgia Bar
Association; the Reverend C. B. Wilmer, rector of St. Luke's Episcopal
Church; and the lawyer Arthur Powell each endorsed clemency. So, too, did
the Augusta Chronicle's Thomas Loyless. Averred the editor:

I stand for commutation of the death sentence to one of life imprison-
ment. In this way, it seems to me, we might best live up to our state's
motto— "Wisdom, Justice, Moderation."

COMMUTATION 479

Yet in the end, most Georgians believed that Frank should pay the ulti-
mate penalty, and the man who reinforced that view was, of course, Tom
Watson. Calling on his vaunted skills as both a lawyer and a polemicist, the
Sage used the spring issues of the Jeffersonian to level new charges of mis-
conduct against the defense, deliver what amounted to another closing
argument for the state, repulse the attacks against Georgia's courts by the
"millionaire Jews" and their press agents and order the Prison Commission
and the governor to stick to their guns.

Regarding Judge Leonard Roan's letter seeking clemency for Frank,
Watson all but branded it a forgery:

The letter from Judge Roan pretends to have been written December
last.

In December, 1914, the Judge was in such a terrible and agonizing con-
dition that an operation taking away his jaw and almost the whole side of
his face had to be performed.

In December, the sufferer could not hold a pen.

He certainly could not have prepared such a letter as Frank's lawyers
presented without assistance.

This is the blackest feature of the defensive methods, blacker than the
attempt to bribe witnesses and to suppress evidence.

As to why Frank's lawyers were resorting to such trickery, Watson main-
tained that it was because the truth could not sustain them. Though he
raised once more the topic of the hair and blood evidence and Monteen
Stover's testimony, Watson came down hardest on the character issue.
"What sort of man is Leo Frank?" he asked. His answer:

In the official record are the names of more than a dozen white girls and
ladies who swore in open court that Frank's character for lewdness, lascivi-
ousness, immorality WAS BAD!

Could Hugh Dorsey have drummed up a dozen white women of so
good a character the defendant's lawyer did not question them to testify that
the reputation of any respectable man of Atlanta is bad?

The evidence of white witnesses establishes the fact that Frank lusted
after this little Gentile girl Mary Phagan.

Then there was Watson's reaction to the latest onslaughts from outsiders
he regarded, at best, as misinformed:

In behalf of Frank, Governors of States are importuned to meddle with
our affairs; school children sign monster petitions; Ladies' Peace Societies

480 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

fall into line; and mass meetings are held in Chicago and elsewhere, and
these Northern "mobs" gathered from the promiscuous elements of city
life pass resolutions about a case of which they know nothing, except what
is excitedly stated by some inflammatory speaker who has never himself
seen the official record . . .

Woe unto God-fearing fathers and mothers who are trying to raise pure
girls when such a man as Frank can become the romantic hero of theatrical
money seekers like Geraldine Farrar.

Finally, Watson honed in on the upcoming hearings. "It is embarrassing to
the majority of Georgians that John M. Slaton is a member of the law firm
to which Frank's leading attorney belongs," he remarked in the Jefferson-
tan's May 27 number. The governor's untenable position thereby stressed,
the Sage issued an edict— and a warning:

The Governor of Georgia should consider—

(1.) That if the Law is not allowed to take its course in the Frank case,
we might as well abolish the Law and save all future expense of similar
mockeries of Justice;

(2.) That a commutation of sentence will be tantamount to a pardon,
and he had just as well sign the one as the other;

(3.) That if the Prison Commission or the Governor undertake to
undo— in whole or in part— what has been legally done by the courts that
were established for that purpose, there will almost inevitably be the blood-
iest riot ever known in the history of the South.

Consequently, the Prison Commission and the Governor, in such a con-
tingency, would be directly responsible in morals for whatever lives were
lost.

Shall one malefactor suffer the just punishment of the law after his legal
conviction has been upheld in all the courts, State and Federal, or shall we
have wild disorder and perhaps the loss of scores of innocent lives because
of this most wicked and most criminal convict?

It is up to the Prison Commission and the Governor.

If I were the bosom friend and legal adviser of every one of these offi-
cials, I would say —

LET THAT TREE LIE WHERE IT FELL!

By 9:30 a.m. on May 31, a tensely quiet crowd filled the corridors outside
the prison commission meeting chambers on the third floor of the state
capitol in downtown Atlanta. Inside, the 100 chairs allotted for spectators
had long been taken. Seated together at the front of the gallery were Leo
Frank's parents and Lucille, who wore a simple black dress accented by

COMMUTATION 481

white trim. Arrayed behind adjoining desks at the head of the room were
the three commissioners. Chairman Robert E. Davison was a 60-year-old
lawyer from the East Georgia hamlet of Woodville. Eugene Leigh Rainey,
bow-tied and dapper, published a weekly paper, the Dawson News, in the
southwest corner of the state. Mustachioed Thomas E. Patterson was a 46-
year-old lawyer from the middle-Georgia town of Griffin.

Though Henry Alexander and Leonard Haas were present, Frank's case
would be in the hands of yet another new lawyer —William Schley Howard,
a former prosecutor from a rural judicial circuit east of Atlanta who had
also served two terms in the United States Congress. Schley Howard, as
everyone called him, was a widely respected advocate. He was also well
liked. The lawyer had been selected for this difficult task over several
nationally known practitioners. From the perspective of Albert Lasker, who
was again footing the bill, Tom Watson's criticism of outside interference
had made it vital that a popular local deliver the condemned man's final
plea.

Howard began his presentation by reading aloud Judge Roan's letter
endorsing the commutation of Frank's sentence. "It is the most precious
document in the case. It is a new lease on life for Leo M. Frank," he de-
clared upon finishing. Then, in hopes of both maximizing the letter's impact
and silencing those critics who maintained that it was a fabrication, the
lawyer recited a letter submitted by the late judge's closest in-law, Dr. J. T.
Roan of rural Jessup, Georgia:

Judge L. S. Roan was my brother, and during March, 1914, he visited me
in my home. He discussed the case and trial with me. I do not undertake to
quote his words, but the following are a few of the impressions which were
made upon me by his conversation.

The impressions were that a spirit of mob violence permeated the
whole atmosphere of Atlanta and even entered the court room and mani-
fested itself in various ways.

The impression also that I received was that Frank had accounted for
every moment of his time on the day of the murder, except a few minutes,
and that in the morning and afternoon Frank kept a very intricate set of
books in perfect shape, and he could not conceive that a man of Frank's
disposition could have done this had he committed the crime.

He further left upon me the impression that the evidence itself taken as
a whole left grave doubt in his mind as to Frank's guilt and that in passing
upon the motion for a new trial, he only considered the errors of law and
did not pass upon the evidence. He was very sure that the supreme court
would grant Frank a new trial and that this would be better for Frank than
for him to do it.

482 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Taking my brother's conversation as a whole, I am sure he must have
entertained grave doubt as to Frank's guilt.

Howard next provided the commissioners with a number of documents
whose contents reinforced the view that Frank's application for clemency
was founded upon his innocence. Among the submissions were such pre-
dictable items as the dissenting opinions from the Georgia and United
States Supreme Courts. Also included were a few surprises, the most news-
worthy being the Annie Maude Carter letters, which were tendered in
typed duplicate that made for easier comprehension, and the reports of the
physicians who after examining Frank for signs of deviancy had given him a
clean bill of health. Then there was a new item— a study of the murder
notes by Albert S. Osborn, a New York-based handwriting expert. Though
Osborn's "psychoanalysis," as he termed it, covered some of the same
ground as had the works of Benson and Smith, it did isolate one fresh pecu-
liarity—the notes were written in the third person. For documents purport-
ing to have been composed by a girl in her death throes, this was odd. To
Osborn's thinking, Frank would not have committed such an error. "An
intelligent man should realize at once that to be most effective the note[s]
should be in the first person." The less sophisticated Conley, he believed,
wrote them alone.

Howard also made sure that the commissioners heard directly from emi-
nent citizens who supported clemency for Frank. During the daylong hear-
ing (the afternoon session was moved to the general assembly chambers to
accommodate the demand for increased seating), speakers representing
such Georgia cities as Savannah, Dalton and Brunswick pleaded for the
condemned man's life. Appearing as well were several of the Northerners
who'd come South bearing petitions. Former Massachusetts governor Foss
vouched for Frank's character while his employee the feminist Mary
Delaney Fisher begged for mercy in the name of the nation's women and
Marshall Field's Department Store chairman T. N Higginbotham intoned:
"Don't leave the Frank case for history to correct. Correct it and make judi-
cial history."

Schley Howard interspersed the personal testimonials and pleas with
readings from the letters of various others advocating clemency. Legally,
the best informed correspondent was Fulton County's blind coroner, Paul
Donehoo, who asserted:

Personally, I have never made up my mind that Mr. Frank is guilty. On
the contrary, there is so strong a doubt lingering in my mind on the point
that I should feel very badly indeed to stand by and see him hanged. When

COMMUTATION 483

I examined him at the Mary Phagan inquest, he was more than necessarily
open and this spirit on his part has always appealed to me as entirely
inconsistent with the theory of his guilt.

Emotionally, the writer who made the most impact was Lucille Frank. Her
letter was less a plea than a rebuttal to the nasty rumors that had been cir-
culated regarding her home life and her failure to visit her husband when
he was first taken into custody. Lending poignancy to her words was the fact
that as Howard read them, she sat in the front row sobbing.

Our marriage has been exceedingly happy and has never been marred
by the slightest cloud. Leo was regarded and loved by my parents as a son,
and was always courteous, gentle and most respectful in his relations with
them . . .

When my husband was first arrested on this charge and was detained
at police headquarters, I hurried to Decatur Street, accompanied by my
father and brother-in-law. I was not allowed to go up to my husband and
remained in the office of the probation officer, from whence my friends
prevailed upon me to return home. Being assured that my husband would
be released at any moment, I remained at home, but as soon as it became
apparent that he would be detained indefinitely I went to him immediately
and have been going to him every day since.

A chorus of beseeching voices thus raised, Howard took a moment
to summarize his final documentary submission— William Smith's study
of the murder notes. The ioo-page report expanded upon the lawyer's
headline-grabbing insights into Jim Conley's speech and writing patterns.
Spelling, grammar, repetition of adjectives, favorite verb forms— every ele-
ment was fully fleshed out. "In this article," Smith contended, "I show
clearly that Conley did not tell the truth about those notes." Then, he
declared: "I swear to you that I believe Leo M. Frank to be innocent. With
all the earnestness and seriousness of my life, I appeal to you not to let him
die."

Hard upon the presentation of Smith's report, Howard commenced his
closing argument. Though he was brief, he nonetheless made a handful of
crucial points. First, picking up on Smith's study, he asserted: "It can be
shown by the letters Conley wrote to Annie Maude Carter in prison that
Conley was the sole author of the death notes found beside the body. The
mind behind the murder notes belonged to the hand that wrote them." This
fact alone, the lawyer insisted, "is sufficient to warrant commutation." That
said, Howard sought to counter the opinion advanced by Tom Watson that

484 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

neither the prison commission nor Governor Slaton possessed the legal
right to intercede:

The power to pardon comes from our English ancestors. It is commen-
surate with the power of the king, and it is still as big in Georgia as it is in
England. The power of pardon is the exercise of an act of grace . . . The
execution of this power does not discredit the courts, neither does it put
its exponents in an attitude of antagonism or hostility toward the courts.
The power to set aside a statutory procedure, such as has preceded us in
the Frank case, is a power with which you and the governor have been
entrusted directly by the people.

Having appealed to the commissioners' nobler instincts, the lawyer con-
cluded by appealing to their baser ones, in the process framing the decision
before them in the same terms that Rosser and Arnold had framed it for
the jury:

This case has not a parallel in judicial appeals in this state. Conley has
been credited rather than us, and we have been doubted. That is the sum of
the entire case. Never before in the history of this state has there been an
instance where such a low, vicious negro has been believed against the
character and testimony of exemplary whites.

Thereupon, Howard sat down. While Hugh Dorsey had submitted a letter
to the Prison Commission objecting to the commutation of Frank's sen-
tence, he had skipped the hearing, vowing to make his stand later before the
governor. Hence when Chairman Davison asked the audience if anyone
wished to speak for the opposition, he was met by silence.

Any thought that the defense would have not just the last but the only word
before the Prison Commission was short-lived. A mere two hours after the
board's hearing ended, hundreds of men and women fervently opposed to
clemency for Frank began to gather twenty miles to the north of Atlanta in
Mary Phagan's hometown of Marietta. "Mass meeting Monday night,"
declared the handbill that had been distributed throughout the community
over the weekend. "Object: to protest against commutation of the death
sentence of Leo M. Frank." By 7:30, nearly 1,000 people were assembled
inside the Cobb County Courthouse, a vast space illuminated by gaslights
and dotted by signs forbidding the consumption of that messy staple of
Southern cuisine, peanuts.

The first speaker, newly elected state legislator John T\icker Dorsey (a

COMMUTATION 485

distant cousin of the Fulton County solicitor), kicked off the evening with a
bellowing war cry: "Let him hang! "The extended applause that greeted this
ejaculation made it plain that though Mariettans had remained quiet about
the Frank case during the months since Detective William Burns was driven
from their midst, they continued to seethe regarding what they, like Watson,
saw as the efforts of wealthy and influential Northerners to frustrate justice.
Following Dorsey to the lectern was the banker Moultrie Sessions, who
in an address that was ostensibly a paean to the legal system argued that
the factory superintendent's execution would send a strong message that
the courts could be trusted, thus discouraging those who would resort to the
extralegal alternative— lynch law. Finally, however, it was Fred Morris, a
respected Cobb County lawyer and, more important, a former University
of Georgia football phenom, who summed up the collective mood:

Mary Phagan was a poor factory girl. What show would she have against
Jew money? When they found they couldn't fool the people of Georgia,
they got people from Massachusetts, New York and California to try and
raise trouble. Well, we throw the advice of these outsiders back in their
teeth. To hell with what they think.

At night's end, a motion was adopted to send a delegation to Atlanta the
next day to express Marietta's views to the Prison Commission.

Accordingly, at 10 a.m. on TUesday, June i, fourteen well-known Cobb
Countians trooped into the same third-floor capitol hearing room where,
just a few hours before, Schley Howard had begged for Frank's life. The
contingent included not only John Tucker Dorsey and Fred Morris but
Marietta mayor E. P. Dobbs; Bolan Glover Brumby, scion of a famous
Georgia family and president of a prosperous furniture manufacturer;
Cobb County ordinary Gordon Gann; Marietta Journal editor Josiah Carter,
Jr.; former Cobb County sheriff William J. Frey; and Elmer Phagan, little
Mary's uncle. An illustrious group, made more so by the presence of Her-
bert Clay, solicitor general of the Blue Ridge Circuit (which included Cobb
County) and son of the late Alexander Stephens Clay, who had served
Georgia in the United States Senate from 1896 until his death in 19 10.

"We think the law in this case should take its course," declared Clay, who
led off. "Something has been said about prejudice and an unfair trial, but we
believe the evidence shows Frank guilty. People outside of Georgia who
have read biased, I might say subsidized, accounts of this case have been
urging you to commute. But if you commute this sentence, capital punish-
ment might as well be abolished. If the extreme penalty should be enforced,
it is in this case."

Clay was followed by Fred Morris, who asserted that the "people of

486 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Cobb County want to see the law enforced impartially on the rich and poor
alike."

At this, Commissioner Thomas Patterson interjected that what was at
issue had nothing to do with Frank's wealth but with the possibility that he
might be innocent. Read Judge Roan's letter, he urged.

In response, Morris expressed the now widely held view that the letter
was a forgery, adding that even if it wasn't, its author had expressed nothing
new.

Yes, he did, Patterson rejoined. "A doubt as to his own action."

The last Cobb Countian to speak was John Tiicker Dorsey. "The voice
from the tomb" that he wanted the commissioners to hear did not belong to
Judge Roan but to another recently deceased Georgian: "W. J. Phagan,
Mary Phagan's grandfather, a noble citizen who went to his grave with his
mind fully made up as to the guilt of Leo M. Frank."

After Dorsey returned to his seat, Chairman Davison brought the hear-
ing to a close.

During the eight days the Prison Commission deliberated, the mood inside
the defense camp remained almost unanimously hopeful. Dozens of well-
wishers congregated from morning to night in the hall outside Frank's cell
at the Tower. Friends like Milton Klein, Rabbi David Marx, Dr. Benjamin
Wildauer and Sam Boorstin were constant presences, as were Lucille and
all the family members. The lawyers, particularly Henry Alexander and
Schley Howard, also frequently stopped by. So, too, did William Smith.
Frank jotted the name of every visitor in a leather diary he'd recently begun
keeping, a volume in which no one received more mentions than a new-
comer who had established himself as the cause's most vociferous cheer-
leader.

The Boston Traveler's Alexander Brin had journeyed south to cover the
doings of the Massachusetts delegation. When his fellow New Englanders
returned home, he remained. The young reporter's dogged faith in Frank's
innocence and his enthusiasm in expressing the same filled a void that
had been left when C. P. Connolly, in the wake of his failed attempt to en-
list Teddy Roosevelt's support, dropped out of contact. (As the climax
approached, the muckraker checked in to a spa in Battle Creek, Michigan.
"I did not write," he later confessed, "because I did not have the courage.")
Throughout the first week of June, Brin repeatedly interviewed Frank, scor-
ing a string of front-page scoops. "I spent fully two hours with Frank in his
cell yesterday," declared a typical offering. "You cannot spend an hour with
this quiet, brave man without becoming deeply impressed with his sincerity.

COMMUTATION 487

Everybody who goes out from his presence feels about him as I did." While
Brin caught some of the factory superintendent's stilted manner ("He
refers to himself as 'Frank' just as if he were a spectator in the tragedy of
which he is the principal"), his pieces were otherwise consistently lauda-
tory. "There is nothing sorrowful, nothing sullen, nothing cringing about
Frank," the reporter wrote. "His conscience is clear. He is serene."

Hand in hand with the Traveler's glowing accounts of Frank's steadfast-
ness, other Northern papers were unabashedly predicting victory. Reported
the New York Times: Defense lawyers "are optimistic as to the outcome of
the hearing on the petition. It will not be at all surprising if the three com-
missioners vote unanimously in favor of commuting." Echoed the New
York Tribune: "It is authoritatively stated that the commission will recom-
mend commutation. Two commissioners, it is said, were ready to vote for
commutation at the close of the hearing last Monday. The two are governed
by Judge Roan's letter, in which he expressed doubt as to Frank's guilt."

Yet even as Frank's allies were reassuring the nation— and themselves—
that they were on the verge of a great triumph, the forces within Georgia
opposed to clemency were not only gaining strength but making them-
selves loudly heard. At 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 6, a crowd of approxi-
mately 2,500 assembled on the Washington Street steps of the state capitol
to protest against commutation. The main speaker, the Reverend A. C.
Hendley of the Capitol View Baptist Church, denounced outside interfer-
ence in the case. Following his address, the gathering adopted a resolution
pointedly upholding trial by jury. Meantime, at a stand on the event's pe-
riphery, a sales agent took subscription orders for the Jeffersonian, which
had recently revealed that Robert Davison and Thomas Patterson were the
commissioners leaning toward clemency. Cautioned Tom Watson:

Let Davison and Patterson have a care. They are walking on the edge of
an abyss.

In the end, however, the most telling indicator of where a majority
of Georgians stood at this juncture came in a statement involving not
Leo Frank's fate but Jim Conley's. As it so happened, it was during the
prison commission's deliberations that the celebrated Negro, after serving
ten months of his one-year sentence for acting as an accessory after the
fact in the Phagan murder, was released from the Bellwood prison camp.
The prospect of Conley wandering the streets of an overwrought Atlanta
prompted a Northern observer to worry that he might be lynched. Yet
when this emissary from above the Mason-Dixon line voiced his concern,
he received a reply that not only brought him up short but summarized

488 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

local opinion. " 'Lynch him?' exclaimed a native Georgian. 'Never in a
thousand years.' "

Word that the Prison Commission had by a two-to-one vote declined Leo
Frank's petition for the commutation of his death sentence reached the
Tower late on the morning of Wednesday, June 9. "Is it possible? Is it pos-
sible?" Frank asked. Within minutes, Lucille and Rabbi Marx arrived,
followed by other in-laws. "Tears flowed freely from the eyes of all,"
Alexander Brin observed.

After the many positive prognostications, this unexpected turn of events
was devastating for Frank, and for the first time in months he found himself
practically mute. As a consequence, he looked to his friend Milton Klein to
shield him not only from the predictable requests for comment but from a
crush of casual sympathizers. "Mr. Frank has nothing to say right now,"
Klein told a crowd in the Tower's lobby." The next morning, the condemned
man wrote Albert Lasker:

The decision of the Prison Commission was a blow ... I don't know
why I am chosen to go through this ordeal.

Under Georgia law, the Prison Commission was not required to explain
its reasoning in instances where it chose not to recommend clemency.
Hence, the two-man majority of Eugene Rainey and Robert Davision said
nothing. The sole public comment came from the lone commissioner to
support commutation. Despite having been singled out by Tom Watson,
Thomas Patterson released a lengthy dissent. In it, he attacked the state's
case, asserting that Jim Conley "had the highest motive for placing respon-
sibility for the crime on Frank— that of self-protection." To send a man to
death "on the testimony of an accomplice, when the circumstances of the
crime tend to fix the guilt upon the accomplice" was unconscionable. Ulti-
mately, though, Patterson's protest was merely that. As the Constitution
flatly noted: "Governor Slaton now becomes the final authority of the case."

There can be little doubt that in his heart, John Slaton wanted no part of the
Leo Frank affair. His decision, whichever way it went, would offend thou-
sands while overshadowing the accomplishments of a governorship that had
seen Georgia's debt refinanced at an advantageous rate and taxes reduced.
Moreover, the timing was horrendous. Early June at Slaton's 75-acre estate,
Wingfield— a rolling expanse of woodlands and rose gardens north of
Atlanta in Buckhead— was an interlude of lawn parties and outdoor theatri-

COMMUTATION 489

cal productions presided over by the dramatically inclined first lady, Sallie.
This year, the highlight was a staging of The Gift, an impressionistic retelling
of the Pandora's box story starring society belles in the roles of Terpsichore,
Cleo and Calliope and featuring interpretive dances. To spend the closing
days of one's term absently immersed in such firefly-lit scenes was surely
preferable to taking up a clemency proceeding that not only involved a mat-
ter of life and death but threatened to open an all too real Pandora's box of
sectional and religious strife. Yet this is what it had come to.

At 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, June 12, Slaton walked into the packed ante-
room of his capitol office in downtown Atlanta and called the final hearing
on the Frank case to order. Hugh Dorsey was present, as were Henry
Alexander, Schley Howard and the rest of the defense team, which now
included another new lawyer, Manning Yeomans, a homespun figure from
Southwest Georgia hired to placate hostile rural Georgians.

In hopes of scoring big at the outset, Schley Howard opened the hearing
by attacking one of the claims at the core of the prosecution's case—
Conley's contention that he and Frank had used the factory elevator
to transport Mary Phagan's body from the office-floor scene of the crime
to its resting place in the basement. More likely, he informed Slaton, the
Negro, after waylaying the girl in the plant's lobby, had employed the oft-
mentioned scuttle hole as the point of entry to the lower level. "A man such
as Conley could very readily have gone down that ladder and when his
shoulders and arms were free above could have drawn her body towards
him." To back up this theory, Howard played his ace, introducing the subject
of an odiferous piece of evidence whose relevancy had previously been
addressed publicly only in Collier's, and there but obliquely. That evidence:
the so-called shit in the shaft. Declared the lawyer:

You have got this from Conley: That morning [Saturday, April 26, 19 13] his
bowels moved. He went around and in front of and inside the elevator
shaft on the basement floor had a passage of his bowels. Now you have in
evidence by other witnesses that when these people [the responding offi-
cers] came Saturday night, they find that human stool in the bottom of that
elevator shaft untouched. But that Sunday, in running the elevator down,
the investigators smashed into the stool, and the smell of it revealed its
existence. Now mark you, if they [Frank and Conley] had brought the body
down in the elevator on Saturday it would have smashed the excrement
then.

Where in the past, Frank's lawyers had caught Conley in little lies, ones he
blithely admitted, here, for the first time in an official forum, they had appar-
ently caught him in a big lie, one that cast doubt on his entire testimony.

490 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

As Slaton pondered the significance of what he had just heard, Howard,
displaying a keen sense of theatrics, moved off in another direction. By his
count, the state's case, excluding the charges made by Conley, boiled down
to nineteen elements. Frank was the last person to admit having seen Mary
Phagan alive; he sent Newt Lee away from the factory on the afternoon
of the murder; he was nervous the morning the body was discovered; he
changed his mind as to whether Lee had punched the time clock correctly;
supposed blood spots and hair purported to have come from little Mary's
head had been discovered in the plant's metal room— the lawyer ticked
them all off. Then, with a sweeping gesture of his hand, he proclaimed:

An explanation may be given of every one of these alleged instances
against Frank more consistent with his innocence than any guilt.

Whereupon Howard, knowing that he would be permitted to expand on
his views in the coming hours, ceded the floor to a group of citizens who
held a far different position than his.

The contingent from Marietta was headed by the town's best-known cit-
izen, former governor Joseph M. Brown, although the same man who'd
started the ball rolling before the Prison Commission did so here. "I don't
care to make any extended argument in this case," began Herbert Clay, "but
I want to say this to your excellency. The people of Cobb County feel that a
jury has passed on this case, the higher courts have passed on it, and in view
of the fact that no new evidence has been discovered, it is not right to ask
your excellency to commute the sentence." That said, Brown took the floor.
Urging his successor to obey both the state's law and God's, he asserted:

When a governor is asked to set aside a judgement and correct all the
courts, he is asked to change our Constitution and laws and to make mercy
instead of justice. Let me call your attention to the fact that the word
mercy is not in the Constitution of Georgia, and nowhere in the Bible is it
used as having the right to defeat justice.

Brown concluded by reiterating a point Moultrie Sessions had made at the
gathering in Cobb County, in the process issuing what sounded like an ulti-
matum:

Now in all frankness, if your excellency wishes to insure lynch law in
Georgia, if you wish to hopelessly weaken trial by jury in Georgia, you can
strike this dangerous blow at our institutions and our civilization by retry-
ing this case on the identical evidence upon which all the courts have adju-
dicated it. If you defeat the law, the people of this state see no reason for

COMMUTATION 491

jury trials. In its bearing upon the future, this is the most important case
any living man in Georgia has had under review. One law for all, or no law
at all. Now, which shall we have?

On the heels of the Mariettans' stern blasts, the governor recessed the
hearing until Monday.

During the brief weekend hiatus, the pressure both from without and
within Georgia increased. A number of national figures added their names
to the already lengthy register of those supporting clemency. Most promi-
nent among them was the vice president of the United States, Thomas R.
Marshall. Also signing on were a dozen leading magazine and newspaper
editors, including Herbert Croly, editor of the New Republic; C.P.J. Mooney,
editor of the Chicago Tribune; Mark Sullivan, editor of Collier's; R. E.
Stafford, editor of the Daily Oklahoman; and D. D. Moore, editor of the
New Orleans Times-Picayune. Finally, there was another private appeal
from a man who had long been in Frank's corner. Declared William Ran-
dolph Hearst in a lengthy letter to Slaton:

I have heard you say that any man could do the right thing in an
ordinary situation, but the test of a really great and genuine man was to be
able to do the right thing in an exceptionally critical and important situa-
tion.

I feel that you, as the governor of a great state, should rise above all
smaller matters, above all the mistakes of the friends of Frank, above all
the antagonism of his enemies and deal with this question as the Great
Judge will eventually deal with us.

Commutation to life imprisonment will prevent the possibility of a
great mistake being made, a mistake which could never be rectified, a mis-
take which if made would involve you and Georgia in everlasting and
unavailing sorrow and regret.

Closer to home, the wind blew the other way. No sooner had Slaton
adjourned Saturday afternoon's session than a crowd once again formed on
the Washington Street steps of the state capitol. The high point of the
protest came when the famed hillbilly musician Fiddlin' John Carson, his
Stradivarius reproduction in hand, stepped to the fore to debut a new work.
Sung to the tune of an old standard, "Charles Giteau," "The Ballad of Mary
Phagan" expressed the sadness and grievances of most Georgians, emo-
tions only heightened by the mournful bowing and harshly sweet voice of
the artist:

49 2 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Little Mary Phagan
She went to work one day;
She went to the pencil factory
To get her little pay.

She left her home at 'leven
When she kissed her mother good bye;
Not one time did the poor child think
She was going there to die.

Leo Frank he met her
With a brutely heart we know.
He smiled and said, "Little Mary,
Now you go home no more."

He sneaked along behind her
Till she reached the metal room.
He laughed and said, "Little Mary,
You 've met your fatal doom. "

She fell upon her knees,
To Leo Frank she pled.
Because she was virtuous
He hit her across the head.

He killed little Mary Phagan,
Was on one holiday,
And called for old Jim Conley
To take her body away.

He took her to the basement,
Bound hand and feet;
Down in the basement
Little Mary lay asleep.

Newt Lee was the watchman;
When he went to turn the key,
Down in the basement
Little Mary he could see.

He called for the officers—
They locked him in a cell—

COMMUTATION 493

The poor old innocent nigger
Knew nothing for to tell

Come all of you good people,
Wherever you may be,
Supposing little Mary
Belonged to you or me?

Her mother sits a-weeping,
She weeps and mourns all day.
She prays to meet her baby
In a better world some day.

Judge Roan passed the sentence.
You bet he passed it well;
Solicitor Hugh M. Dorsey
Sent Leo Frank to . . .

Carson played the ballad again and again, as if by repeatedly chanting its
somber lyrics, he could consecrate Georgia's seat of government, influenc-
ing the direction of the hearings that would presently resume there.

On Monday, it was Hugh Dorsey's turn, and he opened with an assault on
the defense's assertion that Frank had not received a fair trial. Sounding a
theme that he'd initially articulated during his closing argument before
Judge Roan, the solicitor charged the factory superintendent's lawyers with
raising the issue only after realizing they were losing the battle. If the cli-
mate in which the proceedings took place was prejudiced, he asked, why
hadn't Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold sought a change of venue? Why
hadn't a single Georgia Supreme Court justice ruled favorably on the point
when Frank advanced it in his motion for a new trial? The answer: The alle-
gation was false. True, many Northerners, among them the dissenting jus-
tices of the United States Supreme Court, believed the contention, but
Dorsey attributed this fact to the "assiduously disseminated claim appear-
ing in the papers throughout the nation to the effect that spectators in the
audience arose and cried out to the jury, 'Hang Frank or we will hang
you.' " Addressing Slaton, he declared: "Your excellency, the record shows
that at no time from the beginning to the end of the trial did anybody cry
out against Frank or offer to do him harm."

Dorsey then undertook to rebut the petition's other main assertion— the
one holding that the condemned man was innocent. The solicitor turned

494 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

first to the character charges against Frank, which he reminded Slaton
would have been inadmissible had not the defense opened the door. Then
he mentioned the fact that Rosser and Arnold had failed to cross-examine
the girls who'd testified to the factory superintendent's reputation for las-
civiousness, adding that the lawyers had good reason for refraining: "The
state was ready to show specific acts of misconduct." That said, he led the
governor through the circumstantial evidence that he believed demon-
strated Frank's interest in Mary Phagan, recalling such details as his alleged
refusal to give Helen Ferguson her pay the day before the crime.

With that, the stage was set for a recapitulation of Conley's allegations,
yet Dorsey, reacting to Schley Howard's earlier dismissal of those elements
of the state's evidence not provided by the Negro, instead undertook a bold
program. He would leave out Conley's testimony altogether. "Eliminate
Jim Conley," he told Slaton, and the case against Frank was still overwhelm-
ing. The solicitor started by naming the witnesses who'd sworn that neither
the blood nor the hair found in the factory's metal room the Monday after
the crime had been present at quitting time the Friday before. Then, he
attacked what he termed "the minute alibi the defendant attempted to palm
off on the jury" regarding his activities on the afternoon of the murder. The
fact of Monteen Stover's arrival at Frank's empty office shortly after 12:00
p.m. was, of course, the most damaging particular. But Dorsey also saw sig-
nificance in a previously unremarked-upon discrepancy in the reasons the
superintendent had provided for not attending an Atlanta Crackers base-
ball game later that day. At the coroner's inquest, Frank testified that he'd
begged off due to the inclement weather, yet in his statement at the trial, he
maintained it was because he'd yet to finish work on the company's finan-
cial sheet. The truth, argued the solicitor, was that he had needed the time
"to make some disposition of the body of the girl."

Which brought Dorsey to the topic of Frank's actions on the Sunday
Mary Phagan's remains were discovered. From his failure to answer the re-
sponding officers' initial phone call to his home, to his skulking at the
morgue, his behavior, Dorsey said, had been suspicious. Specifically, the
solicitor cited the irreconcilability of Frank's much remarked upon nerv-
ousness and his apparent attempt to seem offhanded by mentioning that
he was wearing a blue suit. "Why trembling if so indifferent?" he asked.
"Answer: Guilty."

From here on out, Dorsey argued, Frank had only dug himself in deeper.
For starters, on the Monday after the murder, he'd told Pinkerton detective
Harry Scott that James M. Gantt was infatuated with Mary Phagan, when
on Sunday he'd told Black he didn't know the girl. Then there was the fact
that cord of the sort that had been used to strangle little Mary was kept in
abundance near where the state argued the crime occurred— the second-

COMMUTATION 495

floor metal room. Most persuasively, the superintendent, despite knowing
that Conley could write, had not suggested early on the Negro as a possible
author of the murder notes.

No, Dorsey informed Slaton, the state did not need Conley's testimony
to convict Frank. The other evidence was sufficient. So much so that clem-
ency should not be granted. Declared the solicitor in closing:

I am not lacking in mercy, but I have been moved to appear here before
you because I am solicitous that the laws shall be, as the Constitution of
our state declares, impartially and completely administered. I am fearful
that if the verdict of juries in plain cases, as I conceive this to be, shall not
be carried out against the influential as well as the friendless, it would be
an incentive to lawlessness in our state, the consequences of which no
man can calculate, and I am unwilling even passively to be a party to the
encouragement of such a situation.

In the wake of Dorsey's presentation, Slaton ordered a two-hour recess. He
had decided to make a field trip to the grim granite structure at the center
of the mystery. Accompanied by the solicitor, the police department's lead
investigator, Detective John Starnes, and Schley Howard, the governor
toured all the relevant parts of the National Pencil factory. In the office, he
examined the desk where the murder notes were allegedly written. In the
metal room, he inspected the lathe handle around which the hair purported
to have come from Mary Phagan's head had been discovered. And in the
basement, he familiarized himself with both the spot where the girl's body
had been located and the elevator shaft bottom in which the feces that now
figured so large in the defense's argument had been deposited.

Starting Monday afternoon, Schley Howard would dominate the hearing's
remaining hours. The lawyer began by reiterating his contempt for those
elements of the state's case that Hugh Dorsey contended were sufficient to
convict Frank even if Conley's charges were dropped:

What does it matter that Frank was nervous on the morning when he
was called out of his home? What does it matter what he did when he heard
the telephone bell ring about three o'clock? What does it matter that he
shivered and shook as he went in the early morning from his home down to
the undertaker's, where the dead body lay? What does it matter that he
looked furtively, if at all, on the body of the dead girl? They are only men-
tal states, absolutely compatible with a perfectly innocent construction.

496 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Howard then turned his guns back on Conley. Some of what he had
to say— particularly a lengthy explication of the evolution of the Negro's
pretrial affidavits— was, no matter how critical, unsurprising. Equally pre-
dictable was another descent into racism. Regarding what he saw as a key
motive in Conley's attack on Mary Phagan, the lawyer stated:

Who but that knows the negro knows that the prize above life itself to
him is the privilege of debasing a white woman.

All this aside, there was much that was inspired and new in Howard's pres-
entation. For one, he surmised that a heretofore largely unremarked upon
item that had been found by the responding officers next to little Mary's
body— her handkerchief— pointed to Conley as the killer. "Ladies carry
their pocket handkerchiefs in these mesh-bag purses," he remarked. "I do
not know whether this girl had hers there or not, but this is certain: We did
not see the purse or the money. If that handkerchief was in that purse, the
person that got the purse, if they had been [as] indifferent about the purse
as they were about the handkerchief, could have left the purse." Even more
illuminating were the lawyer's insights into Conley's most damning allega-
tion against Frank, the charge of perversion. As Howard saw it, the Negro,
possibly encouraged by the investigating officers, had sensed the need to
add a provocative detail to his testimony that would explain the opposing
judgments of the medical experts as to whether the Phagan girl had been
raped:

I believe that someone undertook to graft [onto] Conley's story the
very commonplace idea that as a Jew Frank had been circumcised and he
was in that respect "unlike other men.'" In the eyes and mind of a man like
Conley, a man who had been circumcised and to that manner transformed,
became different from other men.

Bluntly put, the widely held view of Frank as a deviant very likely sprang
from a crude, anti-Semitic mischaracterization of the bris ritual's disfiguring
impact on the Jewish male member, one that perforce altered sexual prac-
tices.

Though the Atlanta papers did not run the most titillating aspects of
Howard's analysis, news nevertheless spread, further piquing the interest of
an already avid public. When the hearings reconvened Wednesday morning
following a one-day break to allow Slaton to fill a speaking engagement, the
governor's anteroom was thronged. Nearly a hundred spectators, many of

COMMUTATION 497

them women, elbowed their way inside while a dozen or so diehards stood
atop chairs pulled up to the door.

Schley Howard planned to concentrate on the authorship of the case's
most significant clues— the murder notes. He opened by acquainting Slaton
with the reports, most of them introduced the previous spring during the
extraordinary-motion battle, suggesting that the notes were written not,
as the state maintained, in Frank's office, but in the basement. Then he
broached the subject of William Smith's study of the notes' language. But
before he could get going, he was interrupted by the governor.

Indicating that he wasn't happy with several of Howard's earlier pro-
nouncements, Slaton asked for a more thorough explanation as to why the
hair found on the metal room lathe and the blood spot located nearby did
not implicate Frank. In response, the lawyer adduced both some familiar
facts— Dr. Harris's admission that the strands he took from Mary Phagan's
head during the autopsy did not match those twined around the lathe
and Dr. Smith's testimony that the spot in question contained only a few
corpuscles of blood— and a fresh theory. After much consideration, the de-
fense had concluded that the two-and-a-half-inch wound little Mary had
suffered to her scalp could not have been inflicted by the action of Frank
knocking her into a freestanding machine of approximately her height. De-
clared Howard:

There was never blood on that poor child's dress above her waist. Her
clothing has shown no blood above the waist. This blood, if it had been
from a lick struck while she stood erect, while the surging arterial blood
flowed in her body, would have flowed its silent flow in buckets and would
have spoken an eternal truth.

Next, Slaton asked to hear from Howard and Dorsey on a topic he'd
been unable to get out of his mind since Frank's counsel introduced it at the
opening session— the shit in the shaft. Specifically, the governor wanted to
know whether the elevator always hit bottom when descending into the
basement or whether it could be stopped above the ground. If the latter was
so, it called into question the defense's thesis that the fresh mound of excre-
ment mashed on Sunday controverted Conley's claim that he and the
superintendent had used the lift to move Mary Phagan's body.

"Your excellency," replied Dorsey, "this was a disputed point of the
record. If the elevator had gone down at the time Conley and Frank used it,
it would not necessarily have gone to the ground. You can stop it anywhere.
You can stop it an inch from the bottom, and if it was stopped there it would
not have mashed that substance."

Howard, of course, took the opposite view, backing it up with quotations

498 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

from the trial transcript that when uttered had seemed irrelevant but in this
new context could not have been more telling. "Here it is," the lawyer said
after thumbing through a thick document. " 'The elevator hits the dirt at the
bottom.' That is Conley's statement. Darley says, 'There is nothing to stop it
except when it hits the bottom.' Rogers testifies, 'It stops itself when it gets
to the bottom.' "

The discussion having thus ended in disagreement, Slaton directed
Howard to return to the day's initial subject— the murder notes. The lawyer
spent an hour elucidating the many similarities William Smith had found
between the language of the notes and that of the Annie Maude Carter let-
ters. In Howard's words, Smith's report provided a "mathematical demon-
stration" that the murder notes were the mental property of Conley.

The notes, of course, constituted the pivot around which the Frank case
turned, and now that they were under discussion, Howard offered one last
hypothesis, this one intended to suggest what had led Conley to tell the
police that Frank had dictated them to him. After setting the scene at head-
quarters, he declared:

The detectives had Conley in a room and said, "You have lied about
writing; you can write. Take this pencil and you write." They made him
write the very words of the notes. That is the experience Conley actually
passed through and where the idea got readily in his mind that the act of a
mere amanuensis would exonerate him from the blame, and then it was
that he related how Frank dictated [them] to him.

From Howard's perspective, the transparent falsehood of Conley's claim
that Frank had dictated the notes provided the perfect ending point.

The burden John Slaton bore became literally apparent Wednesday
evening when he and his executive secretary, a young lawyer named Jesse
Perry, walked out of the capitol carrying several boxes of transcripts, legal
briefs and other documents. After packing the material into a car, the two
drove to Wingfield. There, in quiet and solitude, the governor would study
the record and decide Frank's fate. With the execution set to take place in
six days, time was short. Accordingly, he got right to work. Midnight found
him sitting in the estate's library, going over evidence and jotting down
notes.

From early Thursday morning until midday Saturday, Slaton and Perry
kept at it, toiling among tables piled high with records and affidavits. The
two left Wingfield but once. Friday afternoon, they drove back to Atlanta,

COMMUTATION 499

halting before the looming National Pencil factory. The outing had a single
purpose. Reported the Constitution:

Primarily the trip to the factory building was made to test the elevator
on which Conley swore he and Frank transported the body to the base-
ment from the second floor. The governor wished to satisfy his mind
whether the elevator was adjustable in speed or descended to the bottom
of the shaft precipitately.

The only other known interruptions in Slaton's labors went unnoted by the
press. Yet they, too, were vital. As William Smith would later write: "I had
two private interviews with Governor Slaton, in which I gave [him] posses-
sion of many important facts and urged the commutation of Mr. Frank's
sentence."

During the period in which the governor deliberated, Leo Frank enter-
tained scores of visitors at his cell in the Fulton County Tower. The men and
women who had been with him from the beginning were now, at what could
well be the end, with him still. His brothers-in-law Charles Ursenbach and
Alex Marcus, his cousin-in-law Jerome Michael from Athens, Dr. Benjamin
Wildauer, Charles Wolfshiemer, Milton Klein, Sam Boorstin, the Haases
and Henry Alexander all dropped by repeatedly. So, too, did Anne Carrol
Moore, formerly the librarian at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, who, despite her
new life as assistant director of the New York Public Library's main branch,
had such warm memories of the scholarly boy she'd once tutored that she'd
come to Atlanta to lend her support. Most days, Frank and Lucille took
lunch alone, and every evening, his parents were there to say good night.
Since his setback before the Prison Commission, the condemned man had
rallied emotionally. Noted the Georgian: "To all appearances he retained
his usual good spirits." Still, the prospect of the gallows— which occupied an
interior courtyard at the Tower— was now imminent and made to seem
even more so by Slaton's response to a question put to him on Friday as to
whether he'd reached a decision. "No," he replied, then added: "The judg-
ment of the court should cause the prisoner to prepare for death." That
afternoon, Leo sent Lucille to a bookstore, from which she returned bear-
ing a novel titled The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come.

It was around noon on Saturday in the library at Wingfield that Slaton
made up his mind. The remainder of the day and much of the night was

500 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

given over to the preparation of what would ultimately be a nuanced
29-page document. Writing with several audiences in mind, the governor
began by acknowledging the widely divergent opinions the Frank affair had
generated:

This case has been the subject of extensive comment throughout] the
United States and has occasioned the transmission of over 100,000 letters
from various states requesting clemency. Many communications have been
received from citizens of this state . . . opposing interference with the sen-
tence of the court.

Having thus in essence acknowledged that his decision would be unpop-
ular with one group or the other, Slaton set about defending Georgia's
honor against outsiders "who have not read the evidence and who are unac-
quainted with the judicial procedure in our state." The governor took issue
with most of what had been published about the Frank trial in the Northern
press. The factory superintendent was not, he asserted, tried by a mob,
adding that "if the courtroom manifested its deep resentment toward Frank,
it was because of the revelation of [facts] that in any community would
excite unbounded condemnation." Nor, he declared, had the evidence been
insufficient to sustain a guilty verdict. "Those giving expression to this utter-
ance," he repeated, "have not read the evidence and are not acquainted
with the facts."

That said, Slaton adduced a dozen pieces of evidence "that to any rea-
sonable person" would tend to incriminate Frank. The ordering of Newt
Lee from the premises at 4:00 p.m. on the day of Mary Phagan's murder, the
unprecedented phone call to Lee later that same evening, the defense's fail-
ure to cross-examine the character witnesses who'd testified as to the fac-
tory superintendent's reputation for lasciviousness— the governor cited
these and other elements that gave him pause. And on top of all of it were
the allegations made by the state's star witness. "It is hard to conceive that
any man's power of fabrication of minute details could reach that which
Conley showed, unless it be the truth."

Had providence stilled Slaton's hand Saturday evening, his decision, as it
then read, would have given every indication that he intended to let Frank's
execution proceed. But three thousand words into the document, the gov-
ernor returned to the crucial question: "Did Conley speak the truth?" The
power of his story notwithstanding, Slaton had concluded that the answer
was a resounding no. There were many factors that led him to this determi-
nation, but two stood out, and he addressed them at length, beginning with
the shit in the shaft:

COMMUTATION 501

One fact in the case, and that of most important force in arriving at the
truth, contradicts Conley's testimony. It is disagreeable to refer to it, but
delicacy must yield to necessity when human life is at stake.

The mystery of the case is the question as to how Mary Phagan's body
got into the basement. Conley testified that he and Frank took the body
down in the elevator on the afternoon of April 26th, 1913 . . .

Conley testified that on the morning of April 26th he went down into
the basement to relieve his bowels and utilized the elevator shaft for the
purpose.

On the morning of April 27th at 3 o'clock when the detectives came
down into the basement by way of the ladder, they inspected the premises,
including the shaft, and they found there human excrement in natural con-
dition.

Subsequently, when they used the elevator, which everybody admits
only stops by hitting the ground in the basement, the elevator struck the
excrement and mashed it, thus demonstrating that the elevator had not
been used since Conley had been there.

If the elevator was not used by Conley and Frank in taking the body to
the basement, then the explanation of Conley cannot be accepted.

As to how the governor could be certain that the majority view holding that
the elevator always hit the ground was correct, he cited his private Friday
trip to the factory, where he said he tested and retested the lift personally.
Each time, it touched bottom.

The other convincing element for Slaton was William Smith's study of
the murder notes, and he enumerated a number of the similarities Smith
had discovered between the grammar and diction of the notes and the
grammar and diction of Conley's other known written and spoken utter-
ances. They included the frequent use of the words "did" and "Negro," the
employment of the term "make water" to mean "urinate," the use of the
word "play" as a synonym for "intercourse" and the reliance on compound
adjectives. Stated the governor: "Conley was the real author of the murder
notes."

There was much else that Slaton believed demonstrated a reasonable
doubt as to Frank's guilt. He accepted, for instance, the argument that Mon-
teen Stover arrived at the factory on the day of the murder before Mary
Phagan, thus invalidating the significance of this key witness's testimony.
Additionally, he felt there was no truth to Conley's charge of perversion
against Frank, adopting Schley Howard's position that "the only reason
Conley had to make such a suggestion is that someone may have told him
Jews were circumcised."

502 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

By way of ending, Slaton offered a legal rationale for commuting Frank's
sentence to life imprisonment, asserting that contrary to the claims of those
who opposed the action, there was sufficient new evidence not introduced at
the trial, principally Dr. Harris's revelations concerning the hair he'd taken
from Mary Phagan's head at the autopsy and the Annie Maude Carter let-
ters. Moreover, there was Judge Roan's posthumous letter. Ultimately, how-
ever, the governor knew that the decision was his, therefore he concluded:

The performance of my duty under the Constitution is a matter of my
conscience. The responsibility rests where the power is reposed. I can
endure misconstruction, abuse and condemnation, but I cannot stand the
constant companionship of an accusing conscience, which would remind
me in every thought that I, as governor of Georgia, failed to do what I
thought to be right.

Sunday dawned giving every indication that it would be another day
without resolution. The headline atop the front page of the Georgian was:
slaton still delving into frank papers. Thus the principals in the case
busied themselves with their regular activities, unaware that the governor
had made his determination. At the Tower, the familiar crush of friends and
family members descended on Frank, wishing him well while nervously
fearing the worst. The afternoon passed, then the supper hour. At 9:30, the
condemned man retired, ignorant of his fate.

Frank was asleep when around 11:30 a deputy appeared at his cell and
told him to get dressed. Sheriff Mangum had just received a call from the
office of the Prison Commission, which had itself just been notified by Sla-
ton, who all day had sat on the news, believing that in the present climate,
the safest course was to transfer the reprieved man to the state prison farm
in Milledgeville in the dead of night. The plan was to catch a 12:01 train to
Macon, and the rush was so great that Frank had no time to gather his pos-
sessions or pack. He dressed in six minutes, whereupon he and two depu-
ties walked out the Tower's front door and through Atlanta's deserted
streets without encountering a soul. At Terminal Station, they were met by
Mangum, who'd gone ahead to purchase tickets, then descended to the plat-
form and boarded a coach car on which one or two passengers registered a
look of recognition before nodding off.

At 2:44 a.m., the Central of Georgia train pulled into the Macon station.
There, Frank and the deputies waited while Mangum rented a car for the
remainder of the trip to Milledgeville. Though Frank seemed enormously
relieved, there was something taut and frantic in his eyes during the drive
through the empty countryside. "There were cars following us," he later told
a reporter. Yet this was not so. The journey was uneventful, the pursuing

COMMUTATION 503

automobiles merely figments in the mind of a tired and scared man. Around
5:00, just as day was breaking, the party reached its destination. There,
behind a fence, inmates clad in stripes were moving through the faint gray
light. "I had begun to think I wouldn't get to see this place," Frank remarked
shortly after pulling up to the main building.

Monday morning, Atlanta awakened to the cries of newsboys shouting

FRANK'S SENTENCE IS COMMUTED BY SLATON. By 10100, SWarmS of people

were milling about everywhere, bringing the city to a virtual halt. Though
some of these citizens surely approved of the governor's decision, the
majority did not. In response to a query regarding the public mood, Mayor
Jimmy Woodward wired the New York World: "The larger part of the popu-
lation believes Frank guilty and that the commutation was a mistake."

Around noon, an excited throng burst into Slaton's office, but the gover-
nor, exhausted from the weekend's travails, had not come in, and the crowd
drifted back onto the capitol lawn. Shortly thereafter, an unidentified
man, graying and gaunt, mounted the building's steps and, gazing over the
packed mass of humanity, bellowed: "Who will follow me?" To enthusiastic
cheers, this latter-day Danton then led the multitude into the senate cham-
ber, which was soon filled to overflowing and where long into the afternoon
speakers took turns denouncing the state's chief executive.

Across town at city hall, like-minded orators were whipping up a far
more unruly crowd. Among the some 5,000 gathered here, many were spoil-
ing for fights, and as the day progressed, there were numerous arrests, the
most dramatic being that of a plainclothesman who had joined in the protest
and who, after being rebuked for doing so, slugged Chief James Beavers in
the face. The officer was stripped of his gun and badge and promptly carted
away in a patrol wagon, but the incident was hardly reassuring.

While it's doubtful anything John Slaton could have said would have
placated the populace, at midday he summoned the press to Wingfield. Still
in pajamas, eyes dull and swollen from lack of sleep, the governor was
nonetheless clearheaded. "All I ask is that the people of Georgia read my
statement and consider calmly the reasons I have given for commuting Leo
M. Frank's sentence," he urged. "Feeling as I do about this case, I would be
a murderer if I allowed that man to hang. I would rather be ploughing in a
field than to feel for the rest of my life that I had that man's blood on my
hands." Adding that he was convinced Jim Conley had killed Mary Phagan,
the governor ended the conference by releasing his commutation order,
enabling editors to get the lengthy document into late editions. Boomed
the Journal's page-one banner: slaton gives reasons for commuting

FRANK.

504 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Yet no matter how compelling the governor's rationale, most Atlantans
were unmoved. As night fell, the speechifying continued, especially down-
town at Five Points, where at 8:30, to cries of "Pay the Governor a Call," a
throng of about 4,000 set out on foot toward Slaton's mansion.

The route to Buckhead runs six miles straight up Peachtree Street, but
the mob was undeterred by distance or, at first, by the police, bulling
through several roadblocks. To hoots and hollers and honking horns, the
men stopped only to break into a hardware store in search of guns and to
steal bricks and other potential weapons from a couple of construction
sites. At the midway point, fifty mounted officers led by Chief Beavers
made a stand, turning back hundreds. Still, nearly 2,000 got through, storm-
ing on toward their destination.

Wingfield, situated as it was on wooded acreage and set far back from
Peachtree near its intersection with Pace's Ferry, made an attractive target.
Due to the vehemence of the day's earlier protests, the Fulton County
police had done their best to fortify the place, barricading the drive with
barbed wire and stationing a squad of officers and deputized citizens around
the perimeter. But after receiving word of the crowd's size, the governor,
who was waiting up with friends— among them Henry Alexander, counsel
to Frank— realized that the preparations were inadequate and declared
martial law, mobilizing the state militia's Fifth Regiment.

The mob had been outside Slaton's mansion no more than a few minutes
when the troops arrived and with fixed bayonets took up position. Initially,
the demonstrators rained stones and bottles on the guardsmen, injuring the
major in command and several others. But following this barrage, the mili-
tia swung into action, driving the throng back down Peachtree. Though the
mob remained defiant, taunting the troops with a pointed version of the
ditty "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier," it was shortly in full retreat.
By midnight, the threat had been quashed.

The danger, however, had not passed. In fact, as soon as this group had
fled there was a report that 200 Mariettans were approaching from the
north, necessitating the deployment of troops to the rear of the governor's
property. That the Cobb Countians were en route should have surprised
no one, as Marietta's sentiments in the matter were well known and if
anything, its response to Slaton's decision had been more violent than
Atlanta's. The town had hanged the governor in effigy on the courthouse
square, emblazoning an attached placard: "John M. Slaton, King of the Jews
and Traitor Governor of Georgia." The likeness was then pulled down and
torched beneath the community's monument to its late hero, Senator Alex-
ander Stephens Clay. What happened next was apparently even uglier, al-
though the Marietta Journal glossed over the details, maintaining: "We feel
it best that some incidents not be mentioned." Despite having built up such

COMMUTATION 505

a head of steam, the Mariettans thought better of taking on the militia and
stopped just shy of Slaton's estate.

While no other sorties were launched against Wingfield this night, it was
not for lack of hostility. Georgia fairly throbbed with rage. In the middling
city of Columbus, a mob hanged Slaton in effigy, riddling a figure labeled
"Governor Slaton, the Traitor" with countless rounds of ammunition. In the
rural community of Woodstock, there was a similar display. And in the
county-seat town of Newnan, a crowd strung up effigies of both Slaton and
Frank, set them afire, then dragged them behind a car through the streets. In
only a day, the governor had become the second most reviled man in the
state.

For all of Monday's turmoil, Tuesday dawned peacefully in Atlanta. By
noon, Governor Slaton was ensconced in his office at the capitol, the halls
packed not with protesters but with favor seekers and well-wishers. The
atmosphere was at once unabashedly political— with several key patronage
positions to fill before stepping down at week's end, Slaton remained a
potent figure— and surprisingly buoyant. Save for the Constitution, which in
keeping with its pro-Dorsey stance had refrained from commenting on the
commutation, the city's newspapers had rallied around the governor, prais-
ing him for his "manly" decision and predicting that in time, he would be
vindicated.

Proclaimed the Journal:

Whatever individuals may think as to the guilt or innocence of [Frank],
a majority of them recognize in this remarkable case an element of doubt
so huge and staggering that the mind recoils from contemplation of the
extreme penalty of the law inflicted upon this unfortunate man. It is this
irresistible and irrepressible doubt that Governor Slaton has recognized.
The governor has shown wisdom and courage in his performance of an act
of simple justice.

Declared the Georgian:

Had the Governor desired to proceed along the line of least resistance
and do the easy thing, he might have resisted his conscience and let this
defendant go to his death upon the scaffold, but the Governor could not in
good conscience do that. It was not for him to weigh the political conse-
quence of an act of this sort— and be it said to his credit, he did not. It was
only for him to do his duty. The Georgian believes that Governor John M.
Slaton deserves the commendation of the people of Georgia.

506 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Then there were the hosannas from the national press. Now with the San
Francisco Call, Harold Ross, after noting that there was "strong religious
prejudice against Frank," wrote:

Governor Slaton, realizing the large element of existing doubt, was duty
bound to save him from the gallows. His act will receive the endorsement
of the American people, with a notable exception perhaps in his own state.

Added the New York Times:

Governor Slaton feels that because of this act he must live in obscurity
the rest of his days. His view is too narrow. He quite misunderstands what
awaits him. If he but look beyond the boundaries of the State of Georgia,
he can know and feel to how high a place he has raised himself in the
esteem and admiration of the whole country. Had Georgia sent Frank to
the gallows, the good name of the State would have been blackened and its
people would have been under reproach. Governor Slaton has saved
Georgia from herself. He has made his name illustrious.

Yet even as editorialists sang Slaton's praise, martial law remained in
effect within a half-mile radius of Wingfield, where the Fifth Regiment had
pitched tents and thrown up machine gun nests, digging in as if preparing
for a siege. The militia's continued presence underscored the fact that no
matter what the papers— especially such pro-Frank sheets as the Journal,
the Georgian and the Times— might say, their utterances were irrelevant to
most Georgians. The only voice to which the people listened belonged to
Tom Watson.

The first postcommutation issue of the Jeffersonian hit the streets Thursday,
and for sheer demagogic genius, it eclipsed everything Watson had hereto-
fore produced. To begin with, he prefaced its page-one fulmination with a
verse from that fiercest biblical prophet, Jeremiah, wherein the Lord, decry-
ing "a wonderful and horrible thing committed in the land," asks: "Shall not
My soul be avenged on such a nation as this?" Having thus intimated his
purposes, Watson then summoned the faithful. And he did it by summoning
the ghosts in whom they believed. "Once, there were men in Georgia," he
roared, "men who were afraid of nothing save to do wrong; men who sprang
to arms and went to death on a bare question of principle. The sons of those
men carried the tattered Stars and Bars farthest up the heights of Gettys-
burg; met the first shock of battle at Manassas; led the last charge at Appo-
mattox." Inexorably, the Sage was resurrecting the past, rekindling its

COMMUTATION 507

buried passions, preparing his congregation to view what had occurred not
merely as a miscarriage of justice but as an affront to the South. Only after
stoking the fires did he finally thunder:

Our grand old Empire State HAS BEEN RAPED!

Like the Roman wife of old, we feel that something unclean, something
unutterably loathsome has crept to bed with us, and befouled us during
the night: and that while the morning has come again, it can never, never
restore our self-respect.

We have been violated, AND WE ARE ASHAMED!

The despoiler, of course, was John Slaton:

After the hue and cry which the Burns Detective Agency and the Pros-
titute Press has kept up for more than a year, Governor Slaton turns out to
be the dead fly in the ointment, the weak joint in our armor, the vulnerable
heel that lets the fatality enter our body politic.

Judge Roan could not be moved; our Supreme Court could not be
swayed; the United States Supreme Court could not be stormed; the lowly
work people, whose evidence perhaps took the bread out of their mouths,
could not be bullied or bribed.

Our system stood, like Jackson ... it was a stone wall.

At last, one partner got before the other-ROSSER BEFORE SLA-
TON— and the one partner gave what the other partner wanted.

If there was ever a time when Slaton should have proved his manhood,
it was when he was occupying so ambiguous a position.

Either his firm should have withdrawn from the case, or he should have
withdrawn from the firm.

The governor, though, was not the sole transgressor. As Watson never
tired of asserting, there had been "dark places" all along, and for the hun-
dredth time, he took his readers through the litany of offenses, among them
"the attempt to get William Smith to fix the crime" on Jim Conley. Yet the
commutation decision remained the unforgivable sin, for behind it, Watson
saw not just a perfidious alliance between partners but the influence of
those well-heeled sons of David who, he charged, controlled Slaton:

Jew money has debased us, bought us, and sold us— and laughs at us.

Bought and sold! Cried off at the auction block, and knocked down to
Big Money!

ONE LAW FOR THE RICH, AND ANOTHER FOR THE
POOR!

508 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

What Georgians can now deny it?

Mary Phagan, pursued and tempted, and entrapped, and then killed
when she would not do what so many other girls had done for this Jewish
hunter of Gentile girls.

There she lies at Marietta, unavenged by the Law!

And her pursuer and murderer, spirited out of Atlanta, unshackled, and
taken in his natty new suit and patent leather shoes, on a Pullman palace
car, to the State Farm, FROM WHICH AN ESCAPE WILL BE
ARRANGED FOR HIM IN LESS THAN THIRTY DAYS!

The Haas Finance Committee and its cooperative organizations do not
intend that Frank shall be punished at all, for the rape and murder he com-
mitted on the Gentile girl.

In their eyes, she was legitimate prey; and with their Unlimited Money
and Invisible Power, they have established the precedent in Georgia that
no Jew shall suffer capital punishment for a crime committed on a Gentile.

In the name of God, what are the people to do?

This, of course, was the question, and Watson's counsel— which he had
presaged at the outset by invoking Jeremiah and delivered now as a call to
arms— would change history:

Hereafter, let no man reproach the South with Lynch law: let him
remember the unendurable provocation; and let him say whether Lynch
law is not better than no law at all.

What Rosser and Slaton have together done nullifies the Code, abol-
ishes the courts, and plunges us into administrative anarchy.

Shall my soul not be avenged on a such a nation as this?

A WONDERFUL AND HORRIBLE THING IS COMMITTED
IN THE LAND.

A day after Watson's broadside appeared, reports began to circulate that
a group of 150 Mariettans known as the Knights of Mary Phagan had met at
the child's grave and vowed "to 'get' Slaton and Frank, no matter how long
it takes." All three Atlanta papers ignored these rumblings, but the New
York Times flatly asserted: "There seems to be little doubt that such a body
has been formed."

Who faced the greater initial danger from this fraternity was abundantly
plain. Getting Frank would require breaking into the Milledgeville state
prison farm, which following the arrival of its celebrated new inmate had
been reinforced with extra guards and ammunition. Boasted the Macon
Telegraph: "The prison is too secure to ever brook outside violence, for

COMMUTATION 509

approach to the buildings would be fraught with untold danger. Death
would be the toll of any man, or set of men, who would defy the defenses."
The Telegraph's hyperbole aside, few would have disputed its analysis—
Frank was beyond the easy reach of those who wished him harm.

Another possibility was that the Knights— or others of their ilk— might
seek retribution against Georgia's Jews as a whole. Since the commutation,
Atlanta and Marietta had been deluged with red-lettered flyers promoting
a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. "AMERICAN GENTILES/' the
leaflets advised, "IT IS UP TO YOU." More ominously, an organization call-
ing itself the Marietta Vigilance Committee had posted threatening notices
on the doors of the little town's handful of Jewish merchants. They read:

You are hereby notified to close up this business and quit Marietta by Sat-
urday night, June 26, 1915, or else stand the consequences. We mean to rid
Marietta of all Jews by the above date. You can heed this warning or stand
the punishment the committee may see fit to deal out to you.

Yet unsettling as these developments were, an indiscriminate assault on the
state's Jews also appeared unlikely. In fact, upon hearing that such senti-
ments were abroad, Hugh Dorsey telegraphed his Cobb County counter-
part, Herbert Clay, urging him to use his "good offices to pacify the people
and prevail upon them to permit these merchants to remain ... As you and
I know, this kind of thing should not be done." In response, Clay not only
promised to take the appropriate steps, but the Marietta Board of Trade-
in the persons of Josiah Carter, Jr., Moultrie Sessions and garage owner Jim
Brumby— agreed to back him up. Though the board members felt com-
pelled to state that "Leo Frank should have been hung" and that the gover-
nor had "outraged justice," they endorsed restraint: "We beg our citizens to
still stand for law and order, and not punish innocent people for the wrongs
of others."

The choice, then, was clear. If vengeance was to be meted out, it would
almost surely be meted out against John Slaton, most likely on Saturday
amid the pageantry attendant to Nat Harris's inauguration as Georgia's
new governor. As the New York Times reported:

Preparations have been made for a great anti-Slaton demonstration at the
capitol. Railroad men report that unusually large crowds are coming to the
inauguration from the country towns and rural districts, and the prophets
assert that the crowds will be here for the purpose of showing their disap-
proval of Governor Slaton's action. If the inauguration pass[es] without
incident, a bountiful crop of rumors will have come to naught.

510 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

John Slaton's last day in office began just after 2 a.m. when a mob of 200
well-armed men launched the week's second assault on his estate by firing
on a sentry. What followed more nearly resembled a brawl than a battle, as
elements of the Fifth Regiment, after raking the woods with an admonitory
return volley, plunged into the darkness, knocking heads and rattling teeth.
Wisely, the raiders soon turned tail, most of them escaping. But 26 were
placed in custody (among them Mary Phagan's uncle D. R. Benton, of Cobb
County), and in a search of the immediate area, guardsmen found a poten-
tially lethal cache of dynamite caps and fuses.

Around dawn, Slaton emerged from his mansion to look over the pris-
oners, who were being temporarily detained in his stables. The sight of these
men— whose ages ranged from 16 to 46 and whose number included butch-
ers, bricklayers and even a couple of realtors— deeply distressed the gover-
nor. "He stood still for a moment," guardsmen who were present later
recollected, then turned with an expression on his face that suggested "his
heart was breaking." Until this moment, Slaton had underestimated the
people's outrage. Yet for all that, he hastened downtown to his office at the
capitol, where after spending the morning addressing his final correspon-
dence, he and Sallie hosted an informal reception for the leaders of the leg-
islature and assorted salons, among them one of the Mariettans who had so
vociferously opposed the commutation of Frank's death sentence, retired
governor Joseph Brown.

At the appointed hour of noon, Slaton and his guests made the short
walk to the hall of the house of representatives, where the memberships of
the joint legislative bodies, along with scores of dignitaries and functionar-
ies, had convened. Observed the Constitution: "The gallery was crowded to
its utmost standing room capacity, and hundreds crowded about the doors."
Outside on the capitol lawn stood hundreds more.

The inauguration ceremony itself, save for an eruption of hisses that
greeted Slaton when in accordance with tradition he presented the state
seal to Nat Harris, actually proceeded smoothly. But once the transfer of
power had been completed and the former governor and his successor
emerged arm in arm from the house chamber, the atmosphere degener-
ated. "I could see people on the stairs and in the vestibules gnashing their
teeth, shaking their heads, and exhibiting various evidences of hostility,"
Harris later wrote, adding that Slaton gripped his arm so tightly it turned
blue. Though the two men briefly ducked into a conference room, there was
no escaping the inevitable and soon enough, they appeared on the capitol
steps, where to angry shouts of "Lynch him," they descended between
columns of soldiers toward a waiting car. It was then that the attempted
assault occurred. As Harris subsequently remembered:

COMMUTATION 511

Governor Slaton entered the automobile first and just as I was preparing
to follow him a strong, rough looking man darted from the crowd holding
in both his hands a large piece of iron pipe about five feet long and an inch
thick. He raised this to strike the ex-Governor over my head and shoulder.
He could not have reached him without hitting me. Instantly Major Polhill
Wheeler, who was in command of a battalion of the National Guard . . .
seized the hands of the man . . . and turned aside the blow, saving Gover-
nor Slaton and myself from a terrible injury or perhaps death.

In the wake of this incident, Slaton— who was widely believed headed to
New York later in the afternoon— was whisked to Terminal Station, scores
of protestors not far behind on foot. Yet while the ex-governor's car did
stop at the depot, he didn't get out. Instead, following a brief pause, his
driver darted beneath a canopy of viaducts that carried street traffic— and
the throng— above the tracks. By the time men shouting "Where's Slaton?"
started boarding departing trains, their quarry was sitting down to a lun-
cheon in his successor's honor at the Ansley Hotel several blocks away.

This was, by all rights, Nat Harris's moment, but when the gathering's
host asked Slaton to say a few words, he obliged, delivering a statement that
few who heard it soon forgot:

Honest people may disagree with me, an honest man, but we realize
that we must be measured by our consciences. Two thousand years ago
another Governor washed his hands of a case and turned a Jew over to a
mob. For two thousand years that Governor's name has been accursed. If
today another Jew were lying in his grave because I had failed to do my
duty I would all through life find his blood on my hands and would con-
sider myself an assassin through cowardice.

Shortly thereafter, armed guards escorted the former governor back to
Wingfield.

As it turned out, the reports of John Slaton's departure for New York were
merely premature. On Monday— following yet another night during which
troops and marauders exchanged gunfire in Buckhead— the ex-governor
and his wife left Atlanta on Southern Railways. Upon arriving in Manhat-
tan the next evening, they checked in to the Waldorf-Astoria. There,
Slaton— after dropping by the barbershop for a shave and fortifying himself
with one of the hotel's renowned and potent Star cocktails— met the press,
which accorded the "fine, big, upstanding Southerner" the sort of welcome

512 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

usually reserved for war heroes. So solicitous were the questions, so exuber-
ant the camera flashes, that Slaton was soon expounding on every aspect of
the case. Regarding his authority to intervene, he vowed: "It was my duty to
correct the errors the courts themselves could not correct." Regarding his
probe of the murder, he asserted: "I left no stone unturned." But it was Sla-
ton's recounting of a private drama attendent to his moment of decision
that attracted the most attention. As the New York World reported:

He told an interesting story of how he first let it be known that he was
going to save Frank's life. He and Mrs. Slaton were in their library. He had
been deliberating for hours. He turned to his wife and said:

"Dear, my conscience and my mind will not allow me to send that man
to the gallows. It may mean my own life, and it probably will mean my
political life if I commute him, but I'm going to do it. What do you say?"

Mrs. Slaton (Sallie Grant, she was, granddaughter of old Governor
James Jackson of Georgia, who fought six or eight duels) didn't hesitate.
She replied instantly, putting her arms about him: "All right, Jack, never
mind the consequences, let's commute!"

After the news conference, Slaton and his wife stepped out for a night on
the town with their most enthusiastic journalistic patron, William Randolph
Hearst. The first stop was the New Amsterdam Theater, home of the
Ziegfeld Follies. Then it was on to a dinner party at the publisher's West
End Avenue apartment.

For the Slatons, this was the start not just of a triumphant New York visit
(several mornings later, they generated a flurry of news stories by appear-
ing at the downtown courtroom where Harry K. Thaw, murderer of the
architect Stanford White, was attempting to demonstrate that he was suffi-
ciently sane to forgo continued incarceration) but of a summer-long vaca-
tion. Following a week in Manhattan, they would repair to the Adirondacks,
then travel to Chicago and on to Alaska via the Canadian Rockies. From
there, they would journey to San Francisco. After taking in the Pan-Pacific
Exhibition, they would hop down the coast to San Simeon, where they
would once again be the guests of Hearst. Finally, they would sail to Hawaii.
All in all, they would be gone three months, long enough, they hoped, for
tensions at home to subside.

NINETEEN

Around the time the Slatons departed Georgia, a number of power-
ful Mariettans filed into a building on or just off the town square.
The exact location is a mystery, although as someone who was
apparently there put it later, the spot was "so conspicuous you would be
astonished to hear its name called." Which was fitting, for the men in atten-
dance were conspicuous, too. Undoubtedly, most of the individuals who
appeared before the Prison Commission to argue against the commutation
of Leo Frank's death sentence were present. And several of the so-called
Knights of Mary Phagan were present as well. In the end, however, the only
names that matter belong to the men who emerged from the session as the
leaders: Eugene Herbert Clay, John T\icker Dorsey, Fred Morris, Bolan
Glover Brumby, former governor Joseph M. Brown, and Judge Newton
Augustus Morris. They were the ones who would answer Tom Watson's call.
They were the ones who would set the fatal machinery in motion.

The plan was staggeringly audacious— to abduct Frank from the state
prison farm in Milledgeville, transport him across multiple jurisdictions
back to Marietta, then hang him in plain view. Notwithstanding the fact that
lynchings occurred with grim regularity in Georgia during the teens (there
would be 22 of them in 1915), and regardless of the undeniable truth that a
majority of the state's populace would rejoice should Frank perish in this
manner, such an undertaking would be fraught with difficulties. Unlike
most prospective victims, this one was not some hapless Negro incarcerated
in a county jail protected, at best, by an indifferent deputy with a shotgun
across his lap. He was a white man who counted among his allies the most
influential lawyers in Georgia and the entirety of the national press, and he
was housed in a state penitentiary strongly garrisoned and newly bristling
with arms. Moreover, Warden J. E. Smith answered to three prison commis-
sioners, who in turn answered to Governor Harris, who in the wake of Sla-
ton's leavetaking had not only declared the Frank case "a matter of past
history" but had issued a clear warning to potential vigilantes: "I am fixed in
my belief that no one, however aggrieved he may feel himself to be, has the
right to take the law in his own hands." Then there were the inherent logis-
tical hurdles. Almost none of the 150 miles of road that separated Milledge-

514 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

ville from Marietta were paved, and the most direct route ran through
Atlanta, a city where Frank boasted a substantial number of supporters.

Yet despite the many obstacles, if ever there was a group that could pull
off such a scheme, this was it. Politically, each of the Mariettans was exceed-
ingly well connected, not just in Atlanta but throughout Georgia. Socially,
they were equally impressive, with entrees via marriage or business into
many of the state's best families. Financially, the story was the same. But in
the end, the intangibles carried the most weight. To a one, these individuals
were renegade spirits. Authority, unless it was their own, was an affront to
them, the prospect of outraging the whole of Jewry and Yankeedom an
allure. Simultaneously, they felt duty-bound to administer the sentence that
they— like Tom Watson— believed Slat on had illegally set aside. The men
were, in short, as self-righteous as they were intractable. Consequently, they
would be able to steal the light even as they summoned the dark.

By far the most charismatic of the Mariettans was Herbert Clay. At 34,
the oldest son of Georgia's late United States senator was a man of great
accomplishments and even greater excesses. That Clay was loved in Cobb
County as much for the one as the other, while on the surface a contradic-
tion, was in fact unsurprising, for he was the prince of this rural realm, and
what he achieved, its people celebrated, and what he got away with, they
relished.

Clay's achievements spoke for themselves. At 29, he had been elected
mayor of Marietta. At 30, he had married the former Marjorie Lockwood, a
Montgomery, Alabama, belle whose beauty and ambitions rivaled those of
her slightly younger Montgomery contemporaries, Tallulah Bankhead and
Zelda Sayre. And at 31, he had been elected solicitor general of the Blue
Ridge Circuit, which made him the state's chief prosecuting officer from the
Fulton County line north to the Tennessee border. In 19 10, in a glowing
assessment of Clay's potential, the Constitution reported: "He is wide-
awake, genial, full of energy, liberal and absolutely devoted to the best
interests of Marietta and her people. 'A chip off the old block,' he will be
heard from further in the not far future."

But plain as Clay's promise surely was, what those in Cobb County— and
for that matter most Georgians— first thought of upon hearing his name
were his outrageous escapades, for in his personal life he was a thoroughgo-
ing scandal and had been since boyhood. With the senator away for months
at a time in Washington, Herbert, his sister Evelyn, and their brothers—
Lex, Frank, Ryburn and Lucius— had been raised by their mother, Francis
White Clay, in a substantial two-story frame home that to this day domi-
nates Atlanta Street south of the town square. Francis Clay was the soul of
piety and propriety, and whenever the children passed through the down-
stairs parlor, it was all "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am" and "if you please." But

MARIETTA 515

once they reached their second floor domain— which nominally served as
their sleeping quarters but was in truth a cross between a clubhouse and a
saloon— they indulged in innumerable vices. As Clay's son, Eugene Her-
bert, Jr., would reflect decades later: "Everybody was spoiled by Grand-
mother. They were told they were the best in the world and grew up without
restraint. Grandmother thought there was discipline. But there was no dis-
cipline. Only manners."

At the turn of the century, Herbert entered the University of Georgia, an
institution that he seemed to regard as merely a bigger and more diverting
stage upon which to frolic. In short order, he went out for the football team,
joined the Bulldog Club, and made himself a fixture at dances in both
Athens and Atlanta. The dances, which usually featured ragtime bands,
were inevitably triumphs for Clay, who quickly developed a reputation as a
swain. Sandy hair swept back from his brow, eyes brimming with merriment
or devilry, lips turned up in a teasing half smile, he was the sort around
whom girls fairly quivered. Years afterward, a woman who was acquainted
with Clay at the university said simply: "He was the most attractive man I
ever met." The school yearbook, The Pandora, summed up Clay's sopho-
more year by pronouncing him "A Social Success," while the student news-
paper, The Red and Black, cryptically denominated him "He with the pretty
eye."

Yet for all Clay's charms, there was a heedless, self-destructive quality to
his sojourn at the university. He drank improvidently and fell behind aca-
demically. Worse, when inebriated, he became unruly, posing a threat to
himself and others. During the fall of 1901, he was dismissed from the foot-
ball team for unspecified "training violations." Shortly thereafter, he was
found wandering the streets of Athens firing a pistol into the air. Before he
could do any harm, he was subdued, but the administration was not amused
and expelled him. The spring of 1902 found him at Mercer University in
Macon, where he completed his undergraduate and law degrees.

In any young man's life, expulsion from school would be a signal event,
and so it was for Clay, but not in the way one might have thought, for
at least publicly his family did no more than wink. In fact, the senator,
upon enrolling son Lex at Georgia, made light of the episode, remarking
famously: "The University ruined Herbert, and now I'm sending Lex here
to ruin the University."

Senator Clay's statement— its bravado notwithstanding— seems on a
deeper level willfully fatalistic, and by 1915, it could easily have been
viewed as a sadly prescient epitaph for the entire family. Lex, far from ruin-
ing the university, had been dismissed for drunkenness, and while he was
nobody's fool, he had become a perpetually besotted presence on the Mari-
etta square. Meantime, Frank— who had graduated from West Point solely

5l6 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

because President William Howard Taft had expunged an embarrassment
of demerits from his records— had contracted syphilis while stationed in
the Philippines and, after being discharged in San Francisco in the fall of
1914, had disappeared. Three months later, in an episode reported on the
front page of the New York Times, Frank had turned up dazed and disori-
ented by the side of a road in Louisiana. Herbert had brought him home to
Marietta. And as for Evelyn, she'd developed, in her hairdresser's words, "a
little bit of a reputation." The former Lucille Sessions, whose banker father
was among the Mariettans who spoke at the Prison Commission hearing,
was blunter: "She had big bosoms and people talked about her." And the
former Laura Margaret Hoppe, Bolan Brumby's niece, was blunter still:
"Bolan told me, 'Now, Margaret, you must not go with Evelyn Clay any-
more. Everybody will think you're just as bad as she is.' "

As the summer of 1915 began, the Clay clan appeared to be imploding,
yet Herbert— despite his inclination for strong drink— was, if anything, at
the top of his form, widely admired and genuinely effective as a prosecutor.
Seventy-two years later, Luther Hames, a superior court judge who in the
1930s practiced with several of Clay's former partners, recalled: "He was a
powerful politician. He knew every voter by name. He paid the poll tax for
people." Lex Jolley, during the late teens Clay's law clerk, concurred: "He
was just a likeable fellow. A terrific personality. He had a way of convincing
people." This persuasiveness stemmed in part from the fact that Clay's sins
diminished the distance between his lofty station and those lower elevations
inhabited by the folks. Like a groggy Irish lord, he seemed to rule not from
above but from below. Yet finally, his pull was rooted in the old-fashioned
bedrock of leverage, for as solicitor general, he was one of the most infuen-
tial men in North Georgia, the man who decided whether to pursue a prose-
cution or let it drop, whether to bust a bootleg still or look the other way. As
longtime Marietta Journal associate editor Bill Kinney— who has lived his
life in the shadow of the Frank case and as a young man knew many of the
Cobb Countians who participated in the events of 1915— would subse-
quently observe: "All those involved owed Clay personal favors."

The member of the core group of Mariettans who most nearly rivaled Clay
in sheer magnetism was John Tucker Dorsey. But where Clay's intoxicating
allure owed something to rotting southern gentility, Dorsey's hit you
between the eyes like a bolt of white lightning. Reared in the Georgia
mountains, John Tuck— as his friends called him— was, at 37, an emerging
star at the bar and in politics. Like his distant cousin Hugh down in Atlanta,
he appeared to be going places fast. Yet in appearance and demeanor,

MARIETTA 517

Dorsey was still very much a backwoods figure. Big and bearish, face domi-
nated by a cleft chin, wide mouth, and a perpetually cocked left eye, he
came across as both shrewd and capable of violence— and he was.

John T\icker Dorsey was a killer. In 1905, in the town of Gainesville
50 miles northeast of Marietta, he bludgeoned a man to death during a
drunken argument. According to court documents, the crime, while not pre-
meditated, was vicious:

The accused and the deceased, on the night of the killing, were both drink-
ing, and it appears that they had some controversy about taking a drink of
whisky . . . The accused had with him a billiard cue, cut down so that it was
used as a walking stick . . . The stick . . . was the large end of a billiard cue,
cut about four feet long and an inch or more in diameter at the larger end.
The deceased used an insulting epithet to the accused and menaced him by
drawing his hands from his pockets and holding them in a fighting attitude.
It does not appear that the deceased had any weapon. The accused there-
upon struck the deceased with the billiard cue and knocked him down.
The deceased arose and struck the accused several licks, apparently with
his fists and the accused again struck the deceased with the billiard cue,
knocked him down and rendered him unconscious. From the effects of
these blows the deceased died the following day.

Dorsey, as it turned out, was convicted twice of manslaughter— the second
time because the first verdict was overturned due to judicial error. After
then losing on appeal, he served a brief sentence on the Cobb County chain
gang, where shackles dug so deeply into his ankles that he was scarred for
the length of his days.

To say that John T\ick was repentant wouldn't be entirely right, as in later
years, he would tell cronies that by calling him a son of a bitch, his victim
had sufficiently provoked him. Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that
after doing his time, John T\ick had put the incident behind him, taking his
rightful place as one of Marietta's premier trial lawyers— at one point, he
won 10 consecutive murder cases. To have Dorsey in your corner was to
have a man whose every phrase and gesture were calculated to carry the
day. As his son Jasper subsequently recalled:

He was a character. Had he wanted to make a profession out of being a
preacher or an actor, he could have done either with great success. He
enjoyed trying cases in the courtroom where his talents and histrionics
could be brought fully to bear. He could go from outrage at the malefac-
tions of some individual or witness ... to where he had the homiletic qua-

5l8 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

ver in his voice. He could be as charming as a dancing master one minute
and raise his voice in a shout in another. He was great before a jury.

And Dorsey was great before the voters as well. In the fall of 1914, he was
elected to his first term in the legislature, which in the end was why he was
so crucial to the task now at hand.

During the last week of June 1915— which happened to be not only the
week Frank's death sentence was commuted but the week the general
assembly convened— John Tuck traveled to Atlanta to take his seat. A few
days thereafter, Speaker William H. Burwell did the freshman legislator
the unusual honor of appointing him chairman of the House Penitentiary
Committee. The Constitution noted the appointment with wonder, observ-
ing: "From time immemorial the chairmanship has been filled by selection
from the big timber of the legislature." Other than having served on the
chain gang himself, Dorsey had no qualifications. But notwithstanding such
fine points, the Mariettan suddenly found himself in a position to wield con-
siderable influence over not only Warden J. E. Smith and all those who
labored at the state prison farm but the three commissioners to whom they
answered.

If Clay and Dorsey were the rapscallions in the group, Fred Morris was the
Eagle Scout. Like the two others, he was a lawyer, and like Dorsey he was,
at 39, serving his first term in the legislature. But there the similarities
ended. The son of J. G"Gid" Morris— a Confederate veteran and prizewin-
ning farmer— Fred had been reared in the Cobb County countryside, a
dark-haired, nut-brown boy equally at home in the woods with a rifle or on
a river with a rod. But nowhere was he more at home than on an athletic
field. Dazzlingly swift and strong, he had enjoyed a storied three-sport
career at the University of Georgia, starring at end for Coach Pop Warner's
varsity eleven, playing baseball and running track.

After a brief stint in Atlanta as a newspaperman, Morris had returned to
Marietta to practice law, taking on both criminal and corporate clients,
among them the mighty Central of Georgia Railroad. Yet even as he grew
in professional stature, a large part of Morris remained the brave, fleet-
footed boy darting through the gloaming, across the gridiron, down the cin-
der track. Until his mid-thirties, he captained Cobb County's division of the
state militia, and during the 1906 Atlanta race riots he saw action. In 191 2,
when two Negroes in neighboring Forsyth County were accused of raping a
white woman— an accusation that led to the banishment of all blacks from
the county —he represented one of them, even though he cared nothing for
the Negro race's plight. And when the Boy Scout movement began, he

MARIETTA 519

organized the Marietta troop. These were the things a man did. So now
he also did what a man did— lent his glory, his honor, his racing heart to
the mission. Fred Morris gave the plot legitimacy.

So, too, in a different way, did Bolan Glover Brumby. At 39, Bolan was the
scion of a fabled family. Arnoldus Brumby, founder of the Georgia Military
Institute— located, during the Civil War, in Marietta— had educated many
Confederate soldiers, among them Bolan's father, James Remley Brumby.
The war was cruel to James Brumby, claiming the lives of one brother and,
in his mind, his grief-stricken mother. As a consequence, he returned home
both destitute and bitter. Yet after trying his hand at several enterprises, he
launched a furniture-manufacturing concern whose signature piece— a slat-
backed, cane-bottomed rocking chair— became not just a huge seller but an
emblem of Southern hospitality. From Atlanta to New Orleans, no front
porch was complete without a Brumby rocker.

Thereafter, the Brumbys took success as a birthright, and by 1915,
numerous members of the connection had attained it. Cousin Richard B.
Russell (born Richard Brumby Russell) would soon take a seat on the
Georgia Supreme Court, while his son, Richard B., Jr., would within several
years embark on a political path that eventually led to the United States
Senate. Meanwhile, down in Florida, nephew Otis Brumby was editing a
newspaper (the St. Petersburg Times) of which he was a part owner. And
nephew Tom Brumby had recently wed Cordelia Gray, daughter of the
Atlanta Journal publisher James R. Gray.

Yet driven and accomplished as so many of them were, the Brumbys
shared another, darker trait: a proclivity to feud, especially among them-
selves. In fact, due to a dispute over a now forgotten issue, Richard Brumby
Russell disassociated himself from the family, legally changing his name to
Richard Brevard Russell. A falling-out between brothers James and Tom—
whom James had brought into the furniture business— was even nastier.
The upshot: Tom gained control of the Brumby Chair Company (and its
profitable rocker), while James was forced to start over.

True to character, James Brumby got his new venture— the Marietta
Chair Company, which produced furnishings in the mission style— quickly
on its feet, thanks in part to the fierce exertions of his manager and vice
president, Bolan Brumby. Bolan, whom the Constitution described in 1910
as "one of North Georgia's most successful businessmen," was the very
image of arrogant Southern aristocracy. High forehead, wide-spaced eyes,
aquiline nose, defiant mouth, he stormed through life quarreling with
friends and smiting foes. As an old friend remembered years later: "He was
wild and daring."

520 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Though Bolan was known to flare up over almost anything, nothing
angered him more than Northerners. Considering the fact that he marketed
his furniture above the Mason-Dixon Line— stores from Boston to San
Francisco featured Brumby pieces— such hostility may at first seem incom-
prehensible. But in the house where Bolan was reared, "Yankee" was a
dirty word. In fact, as late as 1929, James Remley Brumby, in a history writ-
ten for his children, cried: "Oh that murderous War. How I wish I could for-
get all about it and from my heart forgive those murderers." Later in the
same history, Brumby described a time after the war when he had consid-
ered moving to Mexico "to get from under the U.S. Gov't, which I hated—
have not yet learned to love it."

And neither had Bolan Brumby. By helping to plan Frank's demise, this
volatile son of Dixie was in essence launching a rearguard action in the
Civil War.

Undoubtedly, the most revered of the men who had decreed death for
Frank was Joseph Brown. The former governor, of course, had never cen-
sored himself when it came to his opinions regarding the case. Indeed, dur-
ing his remarks at the clemency hearing, he had tacitly endorsed a lynching.
Yet what role Brown now played is open to speculation. The best theory is
that he served as the group's link to Tom Watson. While no documents sur-
vive to confirm the connection, it is certain that Brown was beholden to the
Sage, for had it not been for Watson's work in Brown's 1908 gubernatorial
campaign against Hoke Smith, the Mariettan never would have been
elected. As C. Vann Woodward notes in Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel:

The business manager of the Jeffersonian proposed to Brown that, pro-
vided enough extra papers were ordered, he would print a "campaign
issue" that would be "a document of tremendous force." He added: "In
making you this offer we are practically giving you the advantage of a thor-
ough campaign organization." The offer was accepted. The itemized bill
presented by the Jeffersonian to Brown, presumably covering all services
during the campaign, amounted to $2,674.10 in payment for 82,500 extra
copies of the paper and fifty-one two-months subscriptions.

At the primary election in June . . . Joseph M. Brown was nominated by
a small majority of 12,000.

Simply stated, Brown had purchased victory from Watson. In monetary
terms, the former governor had satisfied the debt, but in a larger sense, he
remained under obligation. Thus, if Watson had a man in Marietta, it was

MARIETTA 521

almost surely Brown. And as the Marietta Journal's Kinney unequivocally
asserts, the ex-governor was among those who conceived the mission to
Milledgeville.

It was, in its way, an extraordinary group. Yet had it not been for Judge
Newt Morris, it would have been lacking in the raw nerve essential to the
task under consideration. Where Herbert Clay and John TUcker Dorsey
were drunk with the idea of lynching Frank and would attempt to intoxi-
cate both their fellow Cobb Countians and the officials in Milledgeville
with the same wine, Morris was coldly sober. Where Fred Morris (Judge
Newt's distant cousin) thought that the men were doing their "duty as citi-
zens," the judge entertained no illusions. Where Bolan Brumby was refight-
ing the war, Morris was engaged in a battle for the here and now. And
where Governor Brown was servicing an old account, Morris was amassing
political capital for future use. Quite simply, for Judge Newt Morris, this was
an opportunity.

At 46, Judge Newt, as he was generally called, was Marietta's most intim-
idating public figure. Though not a physically imposing man, he was rarely
crossed, and one look at his severe visage suggested why. Lips turned down
beneath a thick mustache, cheeks easily flushed, he appeared quick to
anger, and he was. But it was his eyes— gray, flinty, opaque— that bespoke
his true nature. Pragmatic, calculating, ruthlessly self-disciplined, Judge
Newt did not blink at anything. As the former Lucille Sessions, whose father
often did business with Morris, put it: "Judge Newt always came out on top."

Ever since arriving in Marietta fresh from the University of Georgia
Law School in 1893, Morris— a native of adjacent Cherokee County— had
aggressively sought to elevate himself both on the stump and financially.
First elected to the legislature in 1897, he soon rose to the speakership, and
in 1904, his fellow assemblymen presented him with a singular token of
their esteem: a mahogany gavel fashioned from a piece of stair rail taken
from Washington, Georgia's Heard House, where during the terrible spring
of 1865, a fleeing Jefferson Davis had conducted the Confederacy's last
cabinet meeting. After seven years in the legislature, Morris was appointed
a Democratic Party committeeman, and in 1909, he was elected judge of the
Blue Ridge Circuit. Three years later, when Cobb County native William
Gibbs McAdoo came to Georgia to champion the presidential campaign of
his father-in-law, Woodrow Wilson, it was Morris who'd introduced him to
cheering throngs.

As Judge Newt had ascended politically, so, too, had he made hay, but not
through his law practice. Rather, Morris ran a side business as a property

522 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

developer and contractor, and from it, he earned enough money to obtain a
fine home, Sugar Hill, near the square. Though Morris Construction was
known for doing quality work, Judge Newt was regarded as a sharp opera-
tor. James T. Anderson, Jr., for six decades Marietta's Chevrolet dealer,
recalled that whenever his father, a wealthy Cobb County farmer, engaged
Morris's outfit, he kept his canceled checks for fear Judge Newt might sue
for nonpayment. Deveraux McClatchey, Jr., an Atlanta lawyer with Cobb
County roots, also knew something of Morris's dark side, having once
fought him in court. Years later, McClatchey grumbled: "I try not to hate
anyone, but I come close with him. I'm sure he had no principles." Harold
Willingham, a Marietta lawyer and ex-legislator, offered a more colorful
verdict: "He was a fourteen-karat son of a bitch with spare parts."

That Judge Newt could simultaneously occupy a position of the highest
esteem and the greatest scorn in Marietta— that he could be at once
respected and reviled— was not dissimilar to the manner in which Herbert
Clay could be an object of tongue wagging yet retain power. In short, just as
Clay was the town's prince, Judge Newt was its boss, and the populace
regarded him with a kind of nervous awe. Indeed, the parallels between
Clay and Morris— the men who, in the end, were the most crucial to the
plan afoot— went deeper, in that both were shaped by early experiences
that convinced them they could get away with nearly anything. In Clay's
case, that experience was his expulsion from the University of Georgia,
which, whatever inconvenience it caused him, was ultimately dismissed
with a shrug. In Morris's case, the experience was not so well known— at
least not in Georgia. Though most Mariettans were aware that Judge Newt,
prior to attending law school, had spent a little time out west, few had ever
heard why he came home. Which was just as Morris desired it, for the story
was not the sort a judge would want to get around.

The date was 1889, and the place was the high-desert town of Lancaster,
California. While actually located in northern Los Angeles County, Lan-
caster is east of the San Gabriel Mountains, the last divide between the
West of tumbleweeds and the West of ocean breezes. In Lancaster, Joshua
trees, not citrus groves, punctuate the endless vistas. In the winter, there is
snow; in the summer, blistering heat. The Mojave is only a few miles distant.
Yet in the 1880s, Lancaster beckoned, for the nearby hills held rich deposits
of gold and borax, and the sprawling landscapes were perfect for grazing
cattle. With an uncle— Mace Mayes, member of a respected Marietta clan—
already in residence, Newt, who was twenty years old, had gone there to
seek his fortune.

By the time Morris arrived, Mayes had established himself as one of
Lancaster's leading citizens. Not only was he a partner in both a saloon and

MARIETTA 523

a butcher shop, but he had been elected constable. Mayes took care of his
nephew, making a place for him at the butcher shop and pinning a badge on
him to boot. (Soon enough, Deputy Morris attracted headlines by trailing a
jewelry thief to Bakersfield.) Eventually, young Newt became a justice of
the peace, moonlighting as a salesman for the Antelope Valley Real Estate
Agency.

Yet respectable appearances notwithstanding, Mace Mayes and Newt
Morris were apparently involved in some shady dealings. As David Earle,
staff anthropologist at the Lancaster Museum, stated years later: "It's widely
believed that Mace Mayes and Newt Morris were in the cattle-rustling busi-
ness. That's what all the oral histories say, and I think there's a fair case that
Mayes and Morris got their hands on cattle for which they did not have
title." The men's actions, Earle added, are open to varying interpretations.
In one, the two can be viewed simply as Georgia boys who got caught up in
local politics, which had a South- versus-North flavor. In the other, they
must be judged more harshly. But regardless, there's no disputing the fact
that the pair's activities in Lancaster came to an ugly conclusion.

In the summer of 189 1, Newt Morris was accused of attempted murder
in the shooting of M. H. "Rony" Crane, like himself a former deputy con-
stable. As the Los Angeles Times reported it, Morris allegedly bushwhacked
the man, firing at him with both barrels of a double-barrel shotgun through
a window of his uncle's saloon. Though badly wounded, Crane survived,
primarily because at the time of the incident, he'd been holding a thick
copy of the California Penal Code and it had partially deflected the shells.
From his hospital bed, Crane told the district attorney that Morris was a
"bitter" enemy and that moments before the shooting, "he heard the click-
ing of a gun hammer and on looking up saw Morris." On July 17, Morris
was charged with "wilfully, unlawfully, feloniously and with malice afore-
thought" assaulting "a human being with . . . intent to kill" and transported
to Los Angeles, where the preliminary hearing would be held.

For five mid-August days in a downtown courtroom crowded with
not only spectators but reporters (the fact that Crane's life had been
saved by a law book provided an irresistible angle), both sides argued their
cases. Through the testimony of several Lancaster merchants and a va-
quero named Porfirio Valencia, the prosecution methodically established
that Morris had ready access to a double-barrel shotgun and had been seen
lurking outside his uncle's saloon the night of the incident. The state's star
witness, however, was Crane himself, who calmly identified Morris as his
assailant. Then it was the defense's turn. After introducing the fact that
Crane initially named someone else as the shooter, Morris's lawyers argued
that the wounded man had falsely accused their client because several

524 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

months previous, he'd arrested Crane for horse stealing. Finally, the defense
put up two teenage girls as alibi witnesses, both of whom swore that young
Newt was with them at the time of the shooting.

After a week of testimony, Judge L. Stanton decided there was sufficient
evidence to bind the defendant over, and on August 18, he ordered that
Morris stand trial in Los Angeles Superior Court. Bail was set at $3,500.

Accounts of what happened next differ. According to anthropologist
Earle, Morris— fearful of both conviction and the exposure of his other
illicit activities— skipped out on his bail. According to documents on file at
the Los Angeles County courthouse, however, charges were inexplicably
dropped. Either way, Morris hung up his spurs and returned home.

By 1915, of course, what had transpired in California was 2,000 miles and
nearly a quarter of a century behind Morris. Yet the incident can't be dis-
missed as a minor indiscretion, for it reveals a man capable of violence who
may have believed himself above the law.

Newt Morris was a devious and brassy character. As he aged, his tactics
grew more sophisticated, but the motivation was always the same— to
remove those who stood between him and the object of his desire, and the
object of his desire in 1915 was control of Georgia's Democratic Party. That
such was the case, there can be no question. Indeed, at the party's 1914 con-
vention in Macon— in an incident that was an echo of the past and a pre-
cursor of the future— Judge Newt had ambushed someone else. The victim
this time: John Slaton. The governor, who had never made any secret of his
hope to serve in the United States Senate after finishing his term, had won
that summer's primary. But because he had not received a majority of
the votes, the contest had been thrown onto the convention floor, where
Thomas Hardwick, the second-place finisher, mounted a forceful challenge.
The fight's most heated battles involved the seating of competing slates of
delegates. Which was where Morris, a member of the credentials commit-
tee, took aim. Reported the Constitution, Judge Newt sat Hardwick men
over Slaton men, which of course was politics. But as Slaton delegates later
told it, Morris went further, luring those he could not deny credentials into
hotel rooms stocked with whisky. By the fourteenth ballot, a sufficient num-
ber of Slaton supporters had been waylaid that Hardwick was at last nomi-
nated. In the wake of this triumph, Judge Newt had moved on to bigger
game. Though he clearly believed that Leo Frank was guilty (in 1913, at
the Phagans' request, Morris had quietly offered his counsel to the then
besieged Hugh Dorsey, who had just as quietly declined), it seems plain that
he now saw Frank less as a murderer than as an emblem of his opponents'
power. If he could pull off the mission to Milledgeville, he would destroy
the Slaton wing of the Democratic Party, leaving the Watson wing forever
in his thrall.

MARIETTA 525

While many of the organizers' activities in the days following their first
meeting remain mysterious, there's little doubt that they devoted most
of the time to selecting the men who would carry out the actual raid on
the prison farm. For all their zeal, the planners never intended to make the
trip themselves. They had too much to lose. As Emory University history
professor Judson Ward, a Marietta native who as a boy knew many of the
individuals involved, subsequently asserted: "The power structure would
not touch anything like this with their hands." Instead, Clay and the others
would delegate the job to a cadre of enthusiastic loyalists composed along
military lines. Of the men who would make up the group, none were more
vital than those who would serve as the lieutenants. Once the mission
got under way, they would exercise complete control. Consequently, they
were chosen first. Their names: George Daniell, Gordon Gann and Newton
Mayes Morris— Judge Newt's double first cousin, generally known as Black
Newt.

Like the men who picked them, the field commanders were all strong-
willed characters. But more important, they were all members of Marietta's
petit bourgeois. Which, of course, was perfect. Beneath the elites who were
calling the shots yet above the poor dirt farmers and laborers who would
serve as foot soldiers, they would obey when ordered, lay down the law
when required.

George Daniell was the proprietor of a jewelry shop on the north side of
the Marietta square. The store, which had a cast-iron clock out front, was a
favorite gathering place, and many old-time Mariettans believe the plan-
ners met there. Daniell himself, at 45, was a stout, florid, gabby fellow who
was "into everything" in Marietta from politics to the Rotary Club. Most
particularly, he was into hillbilly music, and by 1 915, he was making quite a
name for himself as the leader of a band that played at dances and warmed
up political rallies.

Gordon Gann was, at 36, an ambitious lawyer and something of a pro-
tege of Judge Newt. The two had once shared offices. In 1914, Gann had
been elected Cobb County ordinary, which placed him in charge of probate
court and put him in touch with most everyone in town.

Both Daniell and Gann were popular figures. Yet just as the organizers
would have lacked sufficient gall had it not been for Judge Newt, the lieu-
tenants would have lacked sufficient grit had it not been for Black Newt.

Black Newt— an apt moniker for the leathery-complected, rakish
Morris— was, at 37, following in the footsteps of his fairer-skinned and more
distinguished relative. Like Judge Newt, he operated in several spheres. In
his official guise, Black Newt ran the Cobb County convict camp— the chain

526 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

gang. Consequently, he was responsible for paving and maintaining roads
and highways. His workforce consisted of two forty-man crews transported
to job sites in wheeled cages. These rolling contraptions served not merely
as modes of conveyance but as the prisoners' living quarters. Years later,
Narvel Lassiter, Black Newt's nephew, recalled: "He'd pull the cages by
team or truck. They'd have a caravan and set up and do work in one section
of the county. I hate to think of the sight of those people." Pistol holstered to
his leg, bullwhip coiled on his shoulder, Black Newt watched over his
charges from horseback. "If they didn't walk the chalk line, he'd get with
'em," James W. Lee, fiddle player in George Darnell's band, remembered
years afterward. "He'd spank 'em down there on the chain gang." So profi-
cient was Morris with his bullwhip that he was sometimes also known as
Whipping Newt.

When not at his day job, Black Newt served as the foreman of his cou-
sin's Morris Construction Company. The setup was inspired. Judge Newt
used his connections to win jobs, then Black Newt used his expertise and a
gang of Negro laborers to do them. As Bob Garrison, another of Black
Newt's nephews, subsequently recalled: "Black Newt had mules, wagons
and a scoop that would hold two yards of dirt. He dug lakes and founda-
tions for houses." By 1915, Black Newt was doing well enough to have built
a comfortable two-story home on Atlanta Street just down from the Clays'
place.

Yet in the end, the relationship between the two Newts was rooted in
more than money. Like the ties that bound most of the Mariettans who got
caught up in this thing, those that connected the cousins involved history.
As Black Newt's son, Paul Morris, later explained: "In 1898, my daddy was
running a liquor still with Judge's brother. Charlie was Judge's brother. And
the judge found out the still would be raided and bought them a train ticket
and they went to Texas. My daddy stayed a year, and Charlie never came
back." After this, Paul Morris added, "Anything Judge wanted to do, my dad
would do it." And what Judge Newt wanted Black Newt to do in the sum-
mer of 1915 was lead the mission to Milledgeville.

Once the men who would captain the party were chosen, the organizers
wasted no time drafting those who would serve in the ranks. Though they
were not brazen, neither were they terribly secretive. As a Mariettan who
was too young at the time to be considered for duty but old enough to see
the wheels go round later stated: "They'd go to a man's office and talk to
him or ... see a man on the job and talk to him. A man in the shop where I
worked was involved. I think there were four in my building who were
going." Added one of the leaders: "The organization of the body was more

MARIETTA 527

open than mysterious. It was more on the order of a plain, 'open-and-shut'
business proposition."

By this point, the planners knew exactly what they were looking for. At
the top of the list were lawmen, especially deputy sheriffs, whose duties
included transporting prisoners to the state farm and who thus not only
possessed relationships with prison personnel but knew the roads between
Marietta and Milledgeville. Almost equally coveted were men who boasted
particular skills that might be needed either during the trip or at the pen-
itentiary. Thus automobile mechanics, telephone linemen, electricians,
doctors and explosives experts were avidly recruited. Finally, there was a
demand for raw muscle— men who could stand and fight.

Also by this point, the planners knew exactly what they were not looking
for. As the New York Times reported: "The lynchers would have with them
no men of lawless character or bad reputation. The lawless and the violent
men of Cobb County were not permitted to know what was going on."
While this stricture applied across the board and was meant to keep anyone
who might compromise the scheme at a distance, it was aimed at one spe-
cific individual: Robert E. Lee Howell, the sawed-off bantam who in 1914
had assaulted William Burns and might have killed him had not Judge Newt
packed the detective into a car and raced him out of Marietta. Though
Howell would have relished a role, the planners, true to their word, told him
nothing.

The organizers' exacting criteria notwithstanding, they had no trouble
finding the 25 men they believed the job required. For one thing, a majority
of Mariettans, like a majority of Georgians, had been so utterly blinded by
Tom Watson's poison that they fervently believed Frank was a monster.
Moreover, and again thanks to Watson, most Mariettans believed Frank
had escaped death because he had exploited his Judaism. "No Jews ever
pay for the crimes they commit," a Mariettan subsequently declared in
explaining why an in-law participated. Finally, though, the men who threw
themselves into the scheme were motivated by neither bloodlust nor anti-
Semitism. Rather, they felt obliged to accept an urgent and weighty respon-
sibility. Here again, of course, their minds had been twisted by Watson, but
as Dorothy Smith, the daughter of Lawrence Haney, one of the party, put it
years later: "This was something my father felt he had to do. He was not
proud, but he was not ashamed."

The prospective participants sought only two pledges from the organiz-
ers. One, they wanted a fair assessment of the risks. "They would not go into
it without first knowing every 'lay of the ground,' " a planner told the Con-
stitution. Two, they wanted some assurance they would not be prosecuted
afterward. While the organizers could not guarantee there would be no
danger, they promised to exert their considerable influence in Atlanta and

528 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Milledgeville. As for the courts— Herbert Clay and Judge Newt were the
courts.

And so the 25 signed on. Some would serve in supporting roles. Jim
Brumby— who not only owned a garage but was Bolan's brother— would
service the cars. L. B. Robeson, freight agent at the Western and Atlantic
Railroad, would lend his Stutz Bearcat. Marietta Mayor E. P. Dobbs would
also lend his car. Former sheriff William Frey would tie the noose. Banker
Robert A. Hill would provide incidental funding. And as for the rest— they
intended to speed through the night to Milledgeville. Sheriff George Swan-
son and Deputies William McKinney and George Hicks, taxi driver Cicero
Dobbs (and his Overland Sixty), farmer D. R. Benton (the Phagan girl's
uncle and one of those arrested during the assault on Slaton's home),
farmer Horace Hamby, mule trader "Coon" Shaw, and Dr. C. D. Elder all
said yes. So did the young Burton brothers, Emmet and Luther, both strap-
ping and brave. So did the redheaded electrician "Yellow Jacket" Brown,
who would ride his motorcycle. And so did Dorothy Smith's father, farmer
Lawrence Haney, who one day would dictate the names of all involved to
Dorothy and her sister, Golmer, who, in turn, would place them in the fam-
ily Bible.

These were men, one of the planners told the Constitution, "whose worth
was known collectively and individually, who were resolved to bear any
burden and to go through with their plans at any cost."

TWENTY

Leo Frank awakened to his new world sick in body and tormented
in mind. "Picture a frail figure," wrote the first national reporter
to reach Milledgeville following the commutation, with "a face
pinched, drawn and colorless. The ridge of the high-bridged nose is sharp,
the eyes and eyebrows stand out like ink splotches in the parchment-like
whiteness." Emotions, the New York Tribune's John J. Leary added, chased
one another swiftly across Frank's visage. One moment, his smile conveyed
a "yearning, bashful appeal." The next, his "mouth twisted itself into an ugly
sideways grin— the snarl the running wolf throws back at its pursuers."
When Leary stood to depart, Frank "took the hand held out to him within
both of his— the frantic, wiry grip of a child in the dark."

Though Frank was not so ill that he was confined to bed, any thought
that he might soon be put to work in the fields alongside his fellow inmates
was quickly abandoned. Suffering from nausea, a cold contracted during
the frantic night flight from Atlanta and what the Macon Telegraph termed
a "nervous breakdown caused by the terrible strain which he has under-
gone in his long fight to escape the gallows," he spent his initial days in
Milledgeville shuffling in and out of the prison hospital, where he was
under a physician's care. As he wrote Lucille his second morning on the
farm: "After that which I have gone through it will take some time before I
gain my poise and physical balance."

For all of Frank's ailments, however, it was clear from the outset that he
was grateful his life had been spared and hopeful that he would find peace.
"It has indeed been an ordeal for both of us my darling," he confided to
Lucille, "but in time both of us will be happy."

Improbably enough, the state prison farm provided a conducive setting
for Frank's physical and emotional recovery. Though much about the in-
stitution—particularly its wards for Negro and female inmates— had long
been regarded as inadequate, its shortcomings were not of a sort that seemed
likely to affect white male prisoners. Spread out over four thousand acres
two miles northeast of Milledgeville, the place— if one could ignore the
armed guards and barbed- wire fencing— was actually lovely. The crops

530 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

(mostly corn and cotton) were terraced into the rolling landscape, while tall
pines lined the roads. Anchoring the property was the dormitory to which
Frank had been assigned. A massive L-shaped redbrick affair fronted by
a columned portico and topped by incongruously graceful gun towers,
the building contained offices for the warden and a bookkeeper, a library,
and open barracks that housed the bulk of the prisoners, who bedded
down on army cots arranged in parallel rows. Erected just four years
earlier, the structure was considered a showpiece. Reported the Macon
Telegraph:

The main building is a credit to the [prison] commission. There isn't a jail in
Georgia more sanitary; in fact, it would be a model jail that would equal
it in this respect. In it are some conveniences, the modern showers for in-
stance, that are lacking in many a Georgia home. Beyond a doubt, some of
the people in that prison are in better living surroundings than they were
before they went there.

The Telegraph was not alone in giving the facility glowing reviews. The New
York Tribune's man was equally impressed:

Outside the Milledgeville farm is well kept in appearance. Inside, it is light
and airy. None of the strange odors that assail one in New York prisons are
here. The place was clean and sweet tonight after three hundred men had
entered fresh from their work in the fields.

Contributing significantly to the prison farm's relatively benign atmosphere
was the fact that most of the some 1,000 men and women incarcerated
here were either aged, infirm (one ward housed tuberculars) or products of
privileged backgrounds. To be sure, there were dangerous characters at
Milledgeville, but the state sentenced the bulk of its able-bodied offenders
to chain gangs, where they labored building highways under the likes of
Black Newt Morris. Consequently, the prison farm was regarded as a soft
snap. The inmates ran the gamut from Aunt Rhody Ann Meeks, an ancient,
pipe-smoking black woman who rode around the place in a little horse-
drawn wagon, to Dr. J. W. McNaughton, the South Georgia physician whose
unsuccessful 1913 appeal of his murder conviction had been a factor in the
one-month delay of Frank's trial. Prior to Frank's advent, Milledgeville's
most illustrious prisoner had been the seventy-year-old Bill Miner, who in
his heyday as a train robber in the 1870s coined the phrase "Hands up!"
Presiding over this institution were two vastly different men. At 35,

MILLEDGEVILLE 531

Warden J. E. Smith was considered an innovative administrator, though he
had no training in criminology, having previously worked in the turpentine
business in Alabama. Strong-jawed and solidly built, he boasted a reputa-
tion, in one reporter's estimation, as "quick, nervy, fearless and experi-
enced." Upon Frank's arrival, it was Smith who had aggressively increased
security.

Of equal dignity to Smith was the farm superintendent, J. M. Burke. In his
mid-fifties, the rugged, sun-bronzed Burke was a veteran of the state correc-
tion department, which, far from being a recommendation, made him a part
of the only recently discredited past. Not until 1910 had Georgia done away
with the last vestiges of its infamous convict lease system, whereby the state
rented offenders to industrialists, chiefly brick manufacturers and coal mine
owners. The arrangement had proved profitable for everyone except the
convicts, who were routinely mistreated. The full extent of the abuse had
not emerged until 1908, when, during legislative hearings, the official osten-
sibly charged with inspecting workplaces for safety violations testified. That
official was Burke. As the Constitution reported:

"Every time I went into the coal mines I found men who had been hurt
by falling slate," Burke told the committee. Then he laughed.

"Did you ever go down into the Durham Coal mines to ascertain the
cause of so many injuries?" asked the chairman.

Witness laughed and stated he once went 100 yards into the Durham
mines, but found so much mud and water therein he came out. He laughed
again.

"Convicts under the care and protection of the state are forced to work
in these mines, are they not?" asked a legislator.

"Oh, yes sir," was the answer of Inspector Burke, who again laughed.

Asked if he had ever gone into the mines at the Lookout Mountain
Coal and Coke Company to see what caused the crippling of so many men,
Inspector Burke said he had not. Again he laughed, this time apparently in
surprise that such a question should be asked.

"I would have had to go down on my hands and knees and crawl in to
inspect that mine," he told the chairman.

Subsequently, Burke added: "I never did inquire why so many men were
whipped."

Burke's testimony had helped to sound the death knell for the convict lease
system, although professionally he'd suffered no reversals. Around Mill-
edgeville, however, the locals regarded him as a "pretty rough character."
That Frank realized his well-being would depend largely on the actions

53 2 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

of Warden Smith and Superintendent Burke was evidenced by the fact that
from the beginning, he did all he could to curry favor with the men. In fact,
if his letters, which were censored by prison authorities, are any indication,
he shamelessly flattered them. "The warden is some fine fellow," he wrote
Lucille early on. "I know you will like him." Several days later, describ-
ing a meeting with Smith and Prison Commissioner Robert E. Davison
(who had, of course, refused to interfere with Frank's death sentence), he
informed Lucille: "This morning, I had a talk with Judge Davidson [sic] . . .
and the warden. They are both my friends and will do all in their power for
my best interest." And it wasn't just to his wife that Frank praised his cap-
tors. To Luther Rosser, he wrote: "The warden and his staff here are very
kind to me. I know I shall get along nicely with them." To Sears and Roe-
buck Chairman Julius Rosenwald, he asserted: "I am in an environment
which, through the kindness of the Warden and his staff, has been made as
liveable as circumstances will permit." And to Manning Yeomans, the coun-
try lawyer who'd joined his team at the end, he wrote: "The Warden and his
staff have treated me white."

Exactly how Smith, Burke and the staff— which consisted chiefly of
inmates whose good behavior had earned them trusty status— regarded
Frank's efforts to ingratiate himself cannot be said, but there can be no
doubt that within days after arriving in Milledgeville, the celebrated new
prisoner had accumulated the trappings of a life that while not luxurious
was, by the standards of most penal institutions, remarkably plush. Through
a judicious use of funds (Lucille sent her husband a $5 check that first
week), Frank quickly exchanged his prison-issue grass mattress for one
made of cotton. Meantime, thanks to a Milledgeville friend of his uncle
Moses named Roy Alford, he acquired towels, washcloths, soap and a razor
and was thus soon able to write Lucille: "I shaved this a.m. Look real
human." Also thanks to Alford, who had married into one of the town's
best families and lived in a Victorian home frequented by local gentry,
Frank met many of the area's leading citizens, most of whom sympathized
with his cause and several of whom brought him gifts, ranging from bags of
citrus fruit to boxes of peaches. Not surprisingly, Frank's family, Atlanta
friends and supporters across the country were even more generous. His
brother-in-law Alex Marcus sent a sateen work cap. His lawyer, Leonard
Haas, sent an Ingersoll watch and a mirror. (Of the timepiece, Frank wrote
his wife: "It's a beauty, much too fine for my present environment.") Temple
member George Gershon (a member of the grand jury that indicted Frank)
contributed a box of fifty cigars. The New York Public Library's Anne
Carroll Moore mailed books. And this was just for starters. Before no
time, Frank's assigned footlocker overflowed with tins of crackers and sar-
dines and packs of cigarettes and Beechnut gum. Most extravagant, how-

MILLEDGEVILLE 533

ever, was the retailer Charles Elya's shipment of phonograph records,
which over Lucille's objection ("Do not get all classical records," she wrote
her husband. "Get some that will appeal to all"), included primarily works
by Caruso and Geraldine Farrar. Frank played the discs on a Victrola in the
warden's office.

Predictably, the improvement in Frank's surroundings was accompanied
by a corresponding improvement in his health, and by the end of his first
week in Milledgeville, he was assigned chores, as he phrased it, "commensu-
rate with my present physical condition." Awakening each morning at four,
he donned striped jersey and pants and joined a cleaning detail comprised
of the prison's frailest inmates. After several hours scrubbing floors, the
men washed up and sat down to a breakfast of biscuits, eggs and buttermilk.
Then they worked a second shift, after which they took dinner. Just a few
days into this routine, in a letter to Herbert Schiff, his old colleague at the
pencil factory, Frank sounded like a man on the mend:

I am feeling much better. My cold has almost disappeared. My appetite is
good and my face is filling out and my color is coming back. I have been
given some light work about the building. This puts an edge on my appetite.
The sanitary conditions here are good. The atmosphere here is healthy. I
am sleeping like a top.

Frank's work schedule, despite the early hours, left him plenty of time to
himself, and he spent most of it at a table in a small room adjacent to Warden
Smith's office. There, with green rows of corn visible through a window in
front of him, he wrote letter after letter. Composing on either lined Montag
notebook paper or prison stationery, Frank worked until his hand cramped.
"I wrote 14 letters this a.m.," he boasted to Lucille one day. The next, he
exclaimed: "This letter is only the 16th I have written today!" Many of these
were perfunctory responses to pieces of mail from strangers, but those
addressed to people who'd contributed significantly to the cause could
hardly have been more heartfelt. To Anne Carroll Moore, Frank wrote:

Your letter of 6/28 brought to me its message of cheer and inspiration. I
was so glad to hear from one whose helpful friendship meant so much to
me during those last trying hours in the "Tower." It was the voice and pres-
ence of the long-ago— infusing spirit and exhorting manhood . . .

To the mother of his lawyer Henry Alexander, he wrote:

I wish to again assure you how deep is my affection and how profound my
respect for your illustrious and noble-minded son. You and Mr. Alexander

534 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

may well be proud of him. He has been to me more than counsel or friend.
He has been a brother, and I treasure his association most highly.

However, it was to Luther Rosser— who had been widely criticized for mis-
handling the defense— that Frank directed his most thoughtful words:

I want to assure you how deep is my respect for you as a man and attorney.
I am not in this predicament because of anything you did or did not do.
My misfortune is the result of a "system" coupled with ignorance and chi-
canery.

In short, Frank felt profoundly indebted to all those who had supported
him, and before many days were out, he had dispatched notes to everyone
from John Slaton and Albert Lasker to Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Yet as Frank, a National Pencil Company pencil in hand, sat looking out
over the prison farm, he could not resign himself to the fact he would spend
the rest of his life in the place. Thus in his letters to those closest to him, he
invariably raised the idea of reopening the fight for exoneration. With
Rosser, he backed into the subject:

The sunshine and atmosphere here are great. I have plenty of opportu-
nity to view plant life and my observation in the crimino-psychological
field is practically limitless.

Still "stripes" and the environment of a penal institution, while interest-
ing in their way, pall upon the vision of an innocent man. Physically, I am a
part of it; spiritually, I am totally foreign. Yet as the old saw has it, "ad astra
per aspera." It cannot last for always.

With Anne Carroll Moore, he was more direct:

This is the breathing spell in the present phase of my life to gain the
strength and reserve for the spurt to freedom, vindication and that honor
which is justly and rightfuly mine.

No sooner had Frank articulated his intention to begin the war anew than
a general willing to lead the armies into battle arrived at Milledgeville in the
person of the filmmaker Hal Reid. Armed with a camera and tripod and
accompanied by a crew, Reid— who had been in Atlanta at the time of the
commutation and shot footage of both the rioting and of Governor and Mrs.
Slaton at home— had come to make an authorized documentary movie.

Over the last days, Frank had been besieged by requests of every sort
from individuals who hoped to exploit his tale. Linton Starr, an Atlanta

MILLEDGEVILLE 535

Journal reporter who had befriended Frank early on, wanted the prisoner
to "write your own story on . . . trip to Milledgeville." Charles Lincoln, the
managing editor of the New York World, asked Frank to "write anything
you want." How to respond to such overtures had engendered disputes
among Frank's advocates. Herbert Haas was dead set against further public
comment, fearing that more attention would only increase animosities. "Let
me caution you against giving out interviews," he admonished Frank. "A
friend of ours advised us today that interviews from you were appearing in
Northern and Eastern papers ... I think you should not do this." Mean-
while, Albert Lasker, who after all was in advertising, counseled the oppo-
site. Frank was himself of two minds. At first, he'd written Lucille: "It would
be well for the case to be given little or no publicity for a while. I little
thought folks could be so rabid and prejudiced, not to say bloodthirsty." Yet
in the same letter, he'd asked how the New York Times was covering the lat-
est events and told his wife to instruct Herbert Haas to "get Ochs to dead-
head" the paper to him. The next day, Frank had issued a request for gratis
copies of another sheet that had championed his cause, directing Lucille:
"Remind Herbert to see Gray about sending me the Atl. Journal." In part,
Frank's fascination with the press sprang from his belief that he owed his
life to the sensation it had created. But it was also true that the sight of his
name in print mesmerized him. As the Times assistant editor Garet Garrett
recorded in his diary, no less a supporter than Ochs had "once said that
Frank would feel cheated if he did not have a chance to make a speech from
the scaffold." In the end, then, it was little wonder that Frank leaped at the
opportunity to have not just his saga but his face presented on screen—
particularly when the presenter, as was the case with Hal Reid, intended his
work to rally the troops.

Reid set up his equipment in the warden's office. Though he posed Frank
both alone and talking with Smith, for many of the shots he put himself
front and center with his leading man— for he, too, was a celebrity. Which
was another reason why Frank had assented to this venture.

James Hallek Reid was at the height of a career that had started on the
stage, veered into journalism and, in 1910, progressed into the movies, at
first on camera, then behind it. In just five years, the 55-year-old filmmaker
had compiled numerous credits, scripting such works as Kaintuck and In-
dian Romeo and Juliet, directing an adaptation of The Deerslayer and— of
vital interest to Frank— directing and producing an anti-death-penalty fea-
ture entitled Thou Shalt Not Kill Reid's greatest contribution to Holly-
wood, however, was his son, Wallace, who was presently filming Maria Rose
with Geraldine Farrar and was on his way to becoming the brightest star on
the Paramount lot. Frank had found yet another powerful propagandist.

Reid shot in Milledgeville for just a day, then packed up his camera and

536 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

raced to New York, where after developing his film, he hosted a screening at
the Palace Theater for an audience of one— Rae Frank. This was a critical
command performance, as in essence Reid was submitting the initial foot-
age from his movie to its subject's mother for approval. Lights dimmed,
voices fell silent, and— as Mrs. Frank subsequently wrote her "dear boy" —
the images came alive:

First you were talking with Mr. Reid; then you were standing talking to . . .
Warden Smith, he turned and looked out of the window and pointed, you
took a forward movement and looked out of the window also, nodding
your head in assent as if you were saying, "Yes I see." Then there was a pic-
ture of you looking at an open book as if reading; that was all there was of
you. There was also the Gov's home, and he and his wife talking together,
and one picture where they enter their auto and go to town, also each
taken alone.

Though the movie was plainly in rough form, Rae Frank liked what she saw.
Later that day, Reid telegraphed Herbert Haas:

FRANK SENIOR SAW PICTURES POSITIVELY DELIGHTED SHE POSES
FOR ME TOMORROW SHE WISHES MRS LUCILLE TO POSE ALSO PLEASE

CONSULT LARGEST PICTURE EXCHANGE THERE ENGAGE MOVING

PICTURE CAMERA MAN SUPT HIS MAKING PICTURE OF HER HAVE HIM

TURN OVER TO YOU THE BOX CONTAINING FILM AFTER TAPING IT

SECURELY AND SEND IT COD ALL EXPENSES TO MY OFFICE.

To shoot Lucille, Reid's cameraman would have to travel to the college
town of Athens, where over the Fourth of July weekend she had begun a
long visit with her merchant uncles, Bud and Simon Michael. Lucille had
undertaken the trip in hopes of raising her spirits. Though overjoyed that
her husband's life had been spared, since the commutation she had lapsed
into a listless depression. As she'd written Leo his first week at the prison
farm: "You know, honey, it seems as if every day is Sunday— I'm so lone-
some, with no place to go, but home." To the extent that he could, Leo had
attempted to cheer her, replying: "Rest up and get back to your poise of
health and mind." He'd been more demonstrative in a later letter, declar-
ing: "It is a joy and pleasure to have so good-looking a wife as you are and I
think you will improve right along now that the harsh strain is over." How-
ever, Lucille had not improved, and at Leo's urging, she had decided to
spend several weeks away.

The Michael brothers' adjoining Prince Avenue mansions held many
fond memories for Lucille. She had, of course, stayed with her uncles in the

MILLEDGEVILLE 537

spring of 1909 after accepting Leo's marriage proposal, and she now hoped
to rediscover something of that happy girl. "This is certainly a lazy life," she
confessed to Leo early on. "After breakfast, which I ... eat alone, because I
get up late, I write a few letters, then we have dinner at 12— after which
there's nothing to do but nap and bathe and dress." Once out of bed, Lucille
often beguiled the hours arranging Victrola records for a "private concert"
or joined Aunt Em and several Athens matrons in the parlor for a rubber of
bridge. Sometimes she ventured downtown to the family department store,
then rode back with Uncle Bud in his car. After supper, she read or, exhibit-
ing an interest in the occult, conducted "seances at letter writing" with her
cousins.

But try as Lucille might, she could not recover overnight from a two-year
siege of sadness and worry. Her reserves had been severely taxed, and the
world remained threatening in big ways and small. The Fourth of July holi-
day, for instance, filled her with dread. As she wrote Leo: "It has poured all
day, and I hope that the same weather prevailed in Atlanta. I had a kind o'
idea that the ruff nex might erupt tonight when they should be filled with
booze and the spirit of independence." Then there was the fear that she
might say something in public that would spark even greater hostility
against her husband. Thus, when she was invited to the Athens Country
Club, she declined.

The pressure never relented, and as she had done her entire life, Lucille
responded by overeating. That was why, when she learned a film crew was
en route to Athens, she panicked. "The 'movie man' will be here tomorrow
to take my pictures," she wrote Leo the night before. "I'm certainly all up in
the air about it. I'm so fat and ugly. Gee! I hate to think about me on canvas;
don't you?"

Such self-loathing on Lucille 's part, so at odds with the resolve she'd dis-
played during the dark months just past, suggests what a toll the whole awful
affair had exacted. Still, by the next day, she was ready to face the camera,
and for the better part of the morning, she worked hard to comply with the
filmmaker's directive that she "talk and show animation." In fact, as soon as
the crew departed, she began to fret that she might have succeeded too
well in depicting herself as sunny and carefree. As she immediately wrote
Leo:

I just had my "movies" made. I certainly hope they will be good. Don't
you? ... I think this, tho'— if they are calculated to do you personally any
good, they should show you and me together . . . Now to show you down
there, and me away from you animated and lively, will not arouse much
sympathy, I'm afraid. I started to write Mr. Reid, but tho't I'd put it up to
you.

538 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

These misgivings did not concern Reid, who, far from seeing any prob-
lem, was delighted with the footage his men took in Athens, and Lucille, in
turn, was comforted and relieved. To be again contributing to the exonera-
tion of the man she consistently addressed as "my angel," "my heart" or
"my own" was all the tonic she required. As she had written Leo his first
week in Milledgeville:

Everyone is so happy that you are going to have the chance that we have
prayed for to prove your innocence to all the "doubting Thomases." Of
course the world as a whole knows you are guiltless, but you must be vindi-
cated.

Yet even as Leo Frank and his supporters were preparing to resume the
struggle, the Mariettans who had decreed Frank's death were initiating
their plot's most cunning manipulation, one that if all worked as planned,
would render the prison farm defenseless by making its officials answerable
not to Governor Nat Harris but to them. The tool the conspirators would
use in attempting to pull off this coup had been provided them shortly after
Frank's arrival in Milledgeville when the state legislature— whose anti-
Frank leanings were such that it had only barely defeated a motion to open
its session with a reading of Tom Watson's postcommutation paean to Judge
Lynch— appointed a special delegation to conduct an inspection of the
prison farm. The body's charge was to investigate a reported typhus out-
break, but after a mere 24 hours on the scene, its members had moved far
beyond the original scope of the job. Just how far became apparent when
upon returning to Atlanta, they released their findings.

PAROLE PRISONERS OR TAKE CARE OF THEM, COMMITTEE REPORTS,

boomed the headline atop page one of the Journal's June 30 editions.
state farm improvements asked, echoed the next morning's Constitu-
tion. Some of the facts supporting these headlines were genuinely new and
alarming. Since January, three inmates had indeed died of typhus. Equally
disturbing was the discovery that the institution was dumping raw sewage
upstream from the aquifer that supplied water to both the prison and the
city of Milledgeville. Finally, though, most of the revelations involved the
sorry state of the place's dormitories for Negro and female prisoners and
thus were not revelations at all, as the legislature had long known of and
ignored such realities. Nonetheless, the delegation members acted as if
they'd unearthed a fresh scandal, proclaiming:

We will not attempt to explain conditions in detail, but your imagination
can supply all that is necessary when we inform you that there are 140

MILLEDGEVILLE 539

negro men incarcerated and crowded into one room of an old wooden
barn 50 by 150, and absolutely no sewerage facilities. To say nothing of
health requirements, in case of fire in this building, these prisoners would
have to be allowed to burn to death or escape and become an awful men-
ace to the surrounding country. There are 129 colored women prisoners in
one room 30 by 100— adjoining the white female ward and only separated
by a wall with a door leading from the whites to the colored, and sanitary
conditions here are worse.

If anyone in the Georgia press was disturbed by either the staleness
of the allegations (no matter how shameful the facts) or the timing, they
kept quiet about it. Indeed, the special delegation's report ignited the pre-
dictable round of journalistic indignation. The Constitution ran a front-page
photo essay depicting various "deplorable conditions" at the farm. The
Journal, meantime, editorialized against the same wretched circumstances,
intoning, "Georgia is too great a state and her people are too proud to suf-
fer the neglect of her prisoners. The state owes a peculiar obligation to
those who are incarcerated at the prison farm, and that duty is to conserve
the health, life and morals of the inmates."

Hard upon the outbreak of the controversy, the legislature increased the
pressure on the prison authorities by ordering several members of the State
Board of Health (among them, Dr. Henry F. Harris) to Milledgeville to
determine whether the scientific data supported the preliminary findings.
As it turned out, the medical men were actually harsher in their assess-
ments. "Prison Farm Conditions 'Absolutely Disgraceful' Declares Health
Board," blared the headline atop the July 8 Constitution. What gave these
findings their urgency was both the specificity of the details ("The feces and
urine are deposited in buckets kept in the overcrowded sleeping quarters,
and these buckets are emptied at irregular intervals") and the implications
of the conclusion. Prison officials, the physicians asserted, should be in-
dicted for "criminal neglect."

Just that quickly, the careers of Commissioners Patterson, Rainey and
Davison and Warden Smith and Superintendent Burke had been put at
risk. At first, Commissioner Davison tried to counterattack. "We have
known all along of the deplorable conditions at the farm," he told reporters,
reminding them that in each of the past three years, the legislature had
turned down the commission's requests for appropriations to build not just
a "new wing for the negro convicts similar to the wing occupied by the
white convicts" but a sewage plant. Yet in the end, he and the others found
themselves at the mercy of the newly appointed chairman of the legis-
lature's penitentiary committee: John Tucker Dorsey of Marietta. In an-

540 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

nouncing his intentions to travel to Milledgeville to clean up the mess,
Dorsey declared:

We are going to vary the custom of the past. Heretofore, the committee
has made these inspection trips between sessions of the legislature. By in-
vestigating conditions now and determining upon the improvements and
reforms to be instituted my committee can make its recommendations to
the legislature while it is still in session which will afford an opportunity to
institute the needed changes without undue delay.

The nerviness of it all was extraordinary, suggesting that Dorsey's cool-
est lynching brethren, particularly Judge Newt Morris (who had, of course,
once been speaker of the Georgia House) and former governor Joseph
Brown, were choreographing the strategy. Not that these men left finger-
prints. Now was the time for misdirection and stealth. Save for the chosen
few, no one was to know, and apparently no one did. The only interest
Frank's lawyers expressed in any of this indicates they took the story at face
value. As Henry Alexander wrote Frank the day the news broke:

I trust that you will be able to guard yourself against the danger of
typhoid fever which is reported as prevailing at the State Farm. Let us
know if there is anything that we can do about this. I can send you some
solid alcohol and a burner with which to boil your water if you desire it.

While the scheme intended to open the prison farm's gates from within
was unfolding, Tom Watson was bombarding Georgia with another fusil-
lade of verbiage. Having called the tune, he was now creating the climate in
which the Mariettans could play it out to its conclusion.

AFTERMATH OF SLATON'S TREACHERY IN THE FRANK CASE, trumpeted

the page-one headline atop the Jeffersonian's July 8 issue, beneath which
Watson, seizing on the ex-governor's much quoted remarks regarding the
participation of his wife, Sallie, in the commutation process, mockingly in-
quired:

Was Sally [sic] the real commuter, after all? And was it Sally Fanny
Grant who annihilated both the juries and both the Supreme Courts?

Slaton cannot complain of the mention of his wife's name. It was he who
slopped over in New York and divulged the private conversation which took
place in his country palace.

Slaton told the New Yorkers that Sally threw her arms around him and
answered—

"Jack, let's commute!"

MILLEDGEVILLE 541

So you see, we were unusually blessed in having two gubernatorial
judges to retry the Frank case, and to upset all the courts; one was Chief
Justice Jack, and the other was Associate Justice Sally.

Watson's disgust with the Slatons, however, was mild compared to his
increasing contempt for the "Rich Jews" who, as the Jeff er soman's July 15
banner declared, "Continue to Defame the People and the Courts of Geor-
gia." The "Jerusalem friend" who merited the nastiest reproof was R. H.
Macy & Company chairman Nathan Straus. By the Sage's lights, Straus
had committed two unpardonable offenses. First, he'd told the "New York
Hebrew American"— as Watson now referred to Hearst's morning New
York paper— that he'd never been prouder of his native state than when
its governor commuted Frank's death sentence. Then he had encouraged
Nathan Jr. to publish an article in Puck asserting that Frank's vindication
would not be won until "Thomas Watson, the very embodiment of the beast
in looks, manners, and conduct" was behind bars. Watson retaliated by giv-
ing conspicuous play to what he billed as an anonymous letter:

Atlanta, Ga. July 9th 1915

Dear Sir:

I note that one Nathan Straus claims to be a Georgian, and puts a great
deal of stress upon that fact.

About one year ago, I spent some weeks in New York, and you know
that this same Nathan Straus owns a very large retail store on the corner of
Broadway and Thirty-fourth street, and that he also conducts a big restau-
rant on the eighth floor of the building. Mr. Straus owns the building and
the merchandise. I was greatly surprised on entering this restaurant, which
is a very large one, to find that negroes were being served at regular tables,
and that white girls were compelled to wait on them.

I mean that they have a large number of white girls who serve as wait-
resses, and that it is not infrequent to see a bunch of negroes go into this
restaurant that belongs to Nathan Straus and take any table they choose
and be served by white girls.

This condition does not exist in any first-class hotel or boarding-house
in the city of New York, outside of this store. I would not write you con-
cerning this matter except for the fact that I want the Southern people to
know the kind of place Mr. Straus is conducting.

"I am, yours very truly,
ATLANTA."

Straus, of course, was not the only Jew whose conduct in the affair had
incensed Watson, and he also assailed the Times's Ochs, the World's Pul-

54 2 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

itzer and the Boston Traveler's Brin. Indeed, so furious was the Sage at
Frank's coreligionists that he concluded this diatribe with one of his most
provocative discourses to date:

The question is—

Do the rich Jews want to create among the Gentiles of this country the
same deep dislike which they have created everywhere else?

There must be some general cause for the universal feeling against the
Jews in Spain, in France, in Russia, in Poland, and in Hungary.

What is that cause?

Why is it that all Caucasian races, in the Old World, are "prejudiced"
against the Jew?

Having had no such "prejudice" ourselves, we have freely welcomed the
immigrant Hebrew, and given him a National House of Refuge.

If they destroy the friendly relations that have always existed between
us, where do they expect to go?

If they continue their rancorous and villainous abuse of the people who
wanted Leo Frank punished for his awful crime, they will raise a tempest
which they cannot control.

Do they want it?

Is this lewd, loathsome murderer worth the price?

The Jeffersonian's readers thus put wise to the Jews— and the Jews thus
put on notice— Watson yet again reviewed the evidence against Frank: the
bloody shirt "planted" at Newt Lee's, the strands of "Mary's" hair discov-
ered on the factory lathe and Monteen Stover's "damning" testimony.

In the end, though, Watson was less concerned with the past than with
the future, for as he saw it, Frank's supporters would now conspire to get
Jim Conley "to take the whole crime upon his shoulders. " As it was
written in the Jeffersonian:

Conley is out and Conley is poor and Conley loves liquor and Conley
can be made to see ghosts and Burns can use on Conley one of the negro
detectives and one of the negro "witch doctors" that Burns boasts of using
to scare negro witnesses in railroad cases.

As soon as [Burns] thinks it safe to recommence his infamous opera-
tions, you will see the Atlanta dailies blossom out into 2-inch headlines, as
they did when William M. Smith announced that he would expose his client
and show the world that the negro alone committed the crime.

There will be a "confession" from Jim; and Jim will be following Sla-
ton's trunks on the way to the Setting Sun, and the filthy Sodomite will dis-

MILLEDGEVILLE 543

appear from the State Farm to resume his pursuit of little Gentile girls in
cities remote from Atlanta.

By mid- July, Watson was in continuous eruption. It was as if a fissure
had opened up inside his brain from which malevolent lampoons, bigoted
maunderings, special pleadings, paranoid fantasies and, to give him his due,
the occasional stinging insight or perversely pithy utterance convulsively
geysered. Not surprisingly, numerous Georgians responded approvingly,
among them many who had previously shunned the Sage but had lately
become converts because, explained one, "his was the only paper in Geor-
gia that protected our State from the slanders of the Northern press." The
Jeffersonian's circulation, which prior to the beginning of its anti-Frank cru-
sade just over a year earlier had stood at 25,000, was now nearing 87,000.
As C. Vann Woodward would later note, stacks of Watson's sheet "melted
like snowflakes" in Atlanta, Savannah, Columbus and Augusta, while in
small towns eager crowds met incoming trains bearing the latest issues.

Such was the atmosphere when John Tucker Dorsey arrived in Milledgeville
the morning of July 12. Accompanied by a large contingent of legislators,
and by Commissioners Rainey, Davison and Patterson, the penitentiary
committee chairman made a show of performing his official duties. He
inspected the prison farm's Negro and female dormitories and its sewage
disposal site. Then he interviewed inmates, among them an unwitting Leo
Frank. ("The Prison Committee of the State Legislature were here today,"
Frank wrote Lucille. "I met many of the representatives and spoke to
them.") Afterward, Dorsey repaired to the warden's office to confer with
Smith, Superintendent Burke and the commissioners— the men whose
cooperation was essential if the lynch party was to avoid an armed con-
frontation with the guards.

Dorsey's meeting with the prison officials was almost surely marked by
discord. While Burke, if his behavior during the convict lease hearings is
any indication, was unlikely to have opposed the Mariettans' scheme, and
while Davison and Rainey had already voted once against clemency, Pat-
terson and Smith were different stories. Patterson, of course, had champi-
oned Frank's cause during the prison commission hearings. And as for
Smith, the courtesy he had shown Frank was evidently genuine. As his
daughter Rebekah, an Atlanta lawyer, recalled 82 years later: "My father
believed Frank was innocent."

Yet whatever the conflicting sympathies among the men who sat across
from Dorsey, they were united by a single reality— each of them could be

544 AN D THE DEAD SHALL RISE

politically and personally ruined if held responsible for the prison farm's
shortcomings. As the penitentiary committee chairman was uniquely suited
to make plain to them, they could either protect Frank and endanger their
livelihoods, even face prosecution, or at the appointed hour they could
instruct guards to look the other way and retain their positions.

Following several hours of negotiations, some sort of agreement was
reached. Upon emerging from the session, Dorsey unequivocally absolved
the prison officials of any culpability in the matter that had putatively
brought him to Milledgeville. "Conditions at the farm are deplorable," he
told a Journal reporter, but "the prison commission should be exonerated
of any blame. For the last four years, they have called attention to these
conditions in writing, and they have predicted an epidemic of typhoid fever.
But they cannot install a sewage system and a pure water supply without
money. The legislature alone is to blame for its niggardly and stingy policy."

For Herbert Clay, Fred Morris, Bolan Brumby, Governor Joe Brown and
Judge Newt Morris, this was extraordinary news— the lynch party would be
given safe passage into and out of the prison farm. During the past weeks,
the band of 25 had made a trial run between Marietta and Milledgeville,
learning which roads were passable while greasing the palms of various
sheriffs. Cars were gassed, guns loaded, alibis (something about a fishing
trip) concocted and resolves firmed. Black Newt and company were ready,
and before day's end they would receive their orders. Barring an unantici-
pated eventuality, Leo Frank would be dead in 36 hours.

Sometime early on the morning of July 13, a telephone rang at the head-
quarters of the Georgia state militia in Atlanta. According to Adjutant
General J. Van Holt Nash, the guard's commanding officer, the voice on the
other end of the line belonged to "an authoritative source in Marietta" call-
ing to report that an "organized crowd" of Cobb Countians was "preparing
to travel in automobiles tonight to Milledgeville." As one of the lynching
brethren afterward confessed, "a leak" had occurred. This was the unantici-
pated eventuality.

The official response to the intelligence was swift and forceful. Nash
wired Macon, ordering three militia companies to muster at the armory.
Meantime, a Central of Georgia train was put in readiness at the Macon sta-
tion. Simultaneously, Governor Nat Harris, whom Nash had also notified,
was directing the captain of Milledgeville's guard unit to call out his troops.
And Fulton County sheriff Wheeler Mangum, who'd been alerted as well,
was dispatching deputies to patrol the roads between Atlanta and Marietta.

Confronted with this show of force, the Mariettans aborted their mis-
sion, whereupon a peculiar calm descended on Georgia, one during which

MILLEDGEVILLE 545

the state's power structure refused to address the magnitude of what had
nearly transpired. Yes, the story made the front pages. And yes, the custodi-
ans of law and order made the expected noises. "If anyone thinks they can
go to Milledgeville or even the adjacent vicinity and start something with-
out encountering the military, they'll be sadly mistaken," vowed General
Nash. But in the main, the actual facts of the matter went unreported.
Neither the Georgian nor the Journal devoted more than two inches to
the episode, and while the Constitution's account was somewhat longer, it
stressed that all was now "quiet as usual." The prize for circumvention,
however, went to the Macon Telegraph, which discounted the threat alto-
gether, declaring: "The entire affair appears to be based on a 'rumor' which
seems to have no head."

The reasons for the general unwillingness to confront the truth were var-
ious and tangled. At first, Frank's lawyers and his allies in the press seemed
simply dumbstruck. Then, once the shock wore off, they decided that to
speak out at this point would do nothing but provide fodder for Watson.
Thus they told themselves that the militia's decisive action had put the fear
of the Lord in the individuals who'd been behind the plot. As Henry
Alexander confided to Frank a day after the news broke: "I am hoping that
things are quieting down."

Meanwhile in Marietta, the men whose best laid plans had been thwarted
possessed their own motives for keeping mum. Most obviously, they wanted
to avoid implicating themselves. More significant was this: They were not
going to jeopardize another try at a later date, for far from being cowed by
the guard, they were outraged. Indeed, some of them were so furious at
having been denied satisfaction that they came close to demonstrating on
the town square. "While the parties were on their way to the courthouse,"
Governor Harris later revealed, "somebody was kind enough to say: 'We
had better go slow about this matter; an investigation will result and the
truth will come out and the truth will show that the Governor was right [to
intervene].' So the meeting was abandoned."

Yet quite apart from the conflicting factors that led all involved to clam
up, there was finally a simpler explanation for the silence. Before anyone
could address what had nearly happened in Milledgeville, something did
happen there.

The afternoon of Saturday, July 17, found Leo Frank in cheerful conversa-
tion with his wife. Lucille had arrived in Milledgeville three days earlier,
and she'd spent several hours at the prison farm each day since. Though the
couple had devoted some of the time to pondering the menacing portents,
they'd passed most of it gossiping and laughing. Lucille had gone on and on

546 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

about her in-laws. "If I ever saw an overgrown boy," she'd written just
before leaving Athens, "it's Uncle Bud. He's the limit. I'll tell you more
when I see you." In the same vein, Leo had talked endlessly about his
perennial bachelor friend Milton Klein, who'd recently astounded every-
one in their circle by marrying, and about his sister, who earlier in the sum-
mer had given birth to her second child. And so the visit had proceeded. For
a moment, it was as if there had been no murder, no trial, no outcry, and
they were back in Atlanta, secure in their small world. As Frank put it at
week's end in a letter to Anne Carroll Moore: "You know how comforting
and pleasurable it is to me to have my wife near."

Around 6 p.m. Saturday, Lucille returned to the rambling white farm-
house on the edge of the prison grounds where she was staying as the guest
of Superintendent Burke, leaving Leo to eat with his fellow inmates, then
retire to his cot, which was located near the front of the barracks. At 9, lights
dimmed. A trusty posted at the door kept watch inside, while an armed
guard stood sentinel outside.

Shortly after 11, a convicted murderer named William Creen— whose
bunk was four removed from Frank's— called to the trusty, asking permis-
sion to speak to him. Permission granted, Creen rose to his feet carrying
what looked to be nothing more than a folded newspaper and made his way
toward the door. When he reached Frank's side, he halted, gazed down at
the sleeping man, who lay on his right shoulder, then, without warning,
struck. Driving a knee into Frank's chest to pin him to the mattress, Creen
drew a butcher knife from its hiding place and raked it across his victim's
throat with a quick, jerky sweep.

Leo Frank's scream awakened the dormitory, and the lights stammered
on to reveal a confusing and gory scene. Creen, who remained on top of the
startled man, was preparing to strike a second blow, while Frank, both arms
outstretched, blood spurting from his neck, was attempting to fend off his
assailant. For a second, the pair remained so embraced. Then the trusty,
assisted by several inmates, wrestled Creen to the floor. A moment later,
medical help appeared in the persons of two other inmates.

J. W. McNaughton and L. M. Harris, both doctors, needed but one look at
Frank to recognize the severity of his wound. Seven and a half inches in
length, it ran from beneath his left ear to the other side of the Adam's apple.
Unless they acted, Frank would die right there, so they picked him up and
carried him to the nearby prison hospital. There, McNaughton identified the
most immediately life-threatening injury: a severed external jugular vein.

By the time Dr. Guy Compton, the prison physician, arrived from his
home in Milledgeville some fifteen minutes later, McNaughton had com-
pleted the tricky task of ligating the jugular. Yet even at that, Frank had lost
so much blood that the first thing Compton did was insert an IV and start a

MILLEDGEVILLE 547

saline drip. Then he operated. Luckily for Frank, neither his windpipe nor
his carotid artery had been cut, though both had been laid bare. Still, it took
two hours for the physician, assisted by McNaughton and Harris, to close
the opening, then dress a nasty wound to the right hand suffered during the
scuffle. Throughout, Frank remained conscious. "Am I going to die?" he
asked at one point. Replied Compton: "We don't know." To which Frank
stoically rejoined: "If I am going to die, I am not afraid. Nothing stands
between me and God."

Not long before sunrise, Compton— accompanied by the Macon doctors
W. A. Little and Harry Moses, who had been called in to consult —emerged
to issue a statement to the press. The procedure had been a success, but
Frank was in critical condition. Any number of complications ranging from
blood poisoning to hemorrhaging could prove fatal. To assist in the pa-
tient's care, Lucille would soon summon Dr. Howard Rosenberg, the family
physician, from Atlanta.

Sunday dawned with William Creen chained by his feet to a post at the
rear of the barracks. Reedy and mustachioed, he presented both a pathetic
picture and a puzzle.

From the outset, opinions varied as to Creen's motivations for attacking
Frank. Of all the prison farm's inmates, he was one of the few who could
truly be called a pathological killer. Reputedly responsible for several
deaths for which he was never tried and admittedly the slayer of a man in
an incident that was ruled self-defense, the 42-year-old Creen was serving a
life sentence for the 1913 murder of a South Georgia insurance agent. He
had shot his victim between the eyes solely because the man had asked him
to stop cursing a group of boys. Initially, Creen had attempted to avoid
prison by pleading insanity. A couple of years earlier, while working on a
construction crew erecting a bridge over the Chattahoochee River, he'd
taken a bad fall, suffering a concussion. He "hadn't been right since,"
argued his lawyer. A panel of alienists, however, declared Creen competent
to stand trial, although following conviction he was judged too feeble for
the chain gang and sentenced to Milledgeville. Even so, Warden Smith had
instructed guards to refrain from angering Creen. He wasn't the sort one
wanted to get worked up— unless, of course, it was with a purpose in mind.

Thus the conflicting theories. One maintained that Creen was demented
and had acted alone. The other held that he was demented but had func-
tioned as "the tool of others." Either way, in the hours following the inci-
dent, all anyone could say for certain was that he'd stolen a knife from the
prison kitchen (at first, the press erroneously reported that the implement
had been used to slaughter hogs) and slipped it past the guards. That this
was the extent of the credible information was due in large part to Creen
himself who, after telling a Journal reporter, "I only wish that I had had

548 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

more strength," announced he would not speak again unless granted an
audience with Governor Harris.

Though the attack on Leo Frank occasioned banner headlines, the
reaction— at least from newspapers that had heretofore been in the victim's
camp— was both spotty and irresolute. Neither the Georgian nor the Jour-
nal, each displaying the same paralysis that had seized them following the
stillborn raid on the prison, uttered a word editorially. Meanwhile, the
assault brought to the surface deep internal divisions at the New York
Times. On July 19, Garet Garrett noted in his diary: "We almost shudder,
not at the cruelty of Frank's situation, but at the pathetic, tragic necessity of
keeping up the talk about it . . . Mr. 0[chs] must know that the Times has
printed altogether too much Frank stuff." Yet over the objections of those
around him, Ochs, his faith in Frank's innocence undiminished, directed
one of Garrett's colleagues to "write something." The result:

The latest development in the case of Frank, who is believed by thou-
sands of his fellow countrymen to be a cruelly persecuted man, will stir the
public sympathy and increase the amazement and regret that the unrea-
sonable show of public feeling against him in Georgia has caused. While
bravely serving his sentence, he is set upon by a fellow-convict, armed with
a murderous weapon such as no dangerous prisoner should be permitted
to handle at any time. This man, Creen, has a record of three murders. He
was clearly a dangerous convict, one with a passion for killing. That he
should have been allowed freedom of movement in prison speaks ill for
the discipline at Milledgeville; that he should have had a chance to secrete
a sharp knife for use in his premeditated attack seems incredible. To look
for the motive of Creen is not necessary. He was a man of murderous
instincts, and though a prisoner and nominally under strict surveillance he
had an opportunity to gratify them.

Deliberate and dutiful, this was not so much condemnation as it was testi-
mony to the harsh reality that after a year and a half of beating the drum,
many Times staffers felt enough was enough.

Ultimately, a few pro-Frank publications— among them the New York
World and the New Republic— would speak out strongly. Yet for the most
part, there was simply the muffled sound of partisans in retreat.

The editorial response from publications that had no use for Frank was, on
the other hand, unanimously forceful. It was also astonishingly hostile, an

MILLEDGEVILLE 549

antagonism heightened by the fact that in the attack's immediate after-
math, the Macon Telegraph printed an interview with a newly released
convict who accused prison officials of coddling their famous inmate.
According to George Johnston, who'd been sent up for theft, Frank "was
treated over there as though he was the warden's brother, just on a little
social visit. No guy with money ever goes to work on that place, friend. They
lie around and have an easy time. They live pretty well, those with money.
Take Frank, for instance. He's had a big roller top desk moved in and he
spends the whole day writing at it and working on his own business, I guess."
Johnston's charges, though they conveyed an underlying truth, were false in
their particulars (Frank, of course, did perform duties, while the sole desk on
the premises belonged to Warden Smith), and the Telegraph eventually ran
a correction. But by then, it was too late, the allegations having been
reprinted by papers across Georgia, usually with accompanying commen-
taries. One of the ugliest of them appeared in the Cherokee Advance, a
weekly published just up the road from Marietta in Canton, another hotbed
of anti-Frank sentiment. Not only did the Advance reproach the wounded
man for the privileges he'd allegedly received before the assault, it re-
proached him for the quality of medical care he'd received in its wake:

The fight between Creen and Frank is one thing, the treatment ac-
corded Frank after the accident is quite another. We are told that there is
no discrimination in the treatment of prisoners in good standing at the
state farm whether he be a rich Jew or whether he be an unfortunate
wretch without a penny in the world. The daily news from Milledgevile
tells us that Dr. Compton, prison physician, has consented to take personal
charge of Frank's case at all times. He has associated with him Dr. Rosen-
berg, Frank's family physician, of Atlanta, Dr. Harris, a prisoner at the
farm, and Dr. McNaughton. The dispatches add that two noted doctors
from Macon were rushed to Milledgeville shortly after the cutting.

This treatment is quite at variance with that received by other inmates.

The Advance is in no sense bloodthirsty and is certainly always anxious
and willing to give first aid to the injured, but we are not convinced that
Leo Frank should be shown any more consideration than hundreds of
other poor unfortunate wretches who— if we are to believe reports— are
simply dying by inches in a horrible hole without money and without
friends.

Heartless as such remarks were, no country editor was going to beat Tom
Watson at his own game. For the Sage, this most recent incident offered up

550 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

a gift coveted by all demagogues: a bit of information— or, better, misinfor-
mation—that can be twisted to one's own ends. In the present instance, that
godsend was the inaccurate initial report that Creen's knife had been used
to slaughter swine. Watson employed the falsehood to taunt Jews in general
and Macy's chairman Nathan Straus (whose son's magazine had again lam-
basted Watson) in particular. Proclaimed the Jeffersonian's July 22 leader:

Note: The butcher-knife used had been in operation during the day
killing hogs.

Nathan Straus can make a memorandum of that.
Kosher!

Contemptuous and derisive, these few lines cut, in their way, more savagely
than Creen's blade, violating not a body but a faith.

As the final, sun-blasted days of the Georgia July receded, Leo Frank
lay coughing and shivering in the prison hospital. Initially, with his temper-
ature at 102 degrees and his wound puffy and seeping, his physicians had
been guarded, terming his condition "very, very serious." Yet even as early
as Sunday afternoon, Dr. Compton told his patient, "You have a good
chance." To this, Frank, his voice barely audible, his senses dulled by opiates,
had replied: "I must live. I must vindicate myself."

Frank's recovery was not, though, going to be easy. As his first visitors—
among them Henry Alexander, Rabbi David Marx, Lucille's uncle Bud
and several members of the press— discovered, he was extremely weak.
Observed the Journals Linton Starr:

Frank recognized one correspondent by holding out his bandaged right
hand. He smiled bravely and called the correspondent's name. The whis-
pered greeting started his cough and he was permitted to say nothing
further.

Nonetheless, just 72 hours after the attack, Frank was strong enough to
be moved from the prison hospital to the small room next to the warden's
office where he'd previously conducted his correspondence. Here, moni-
tored by doctors and watched over by Lucille, he would convalesce in a bed
set up for that purpose. Precluding any unexpected complications, reported
his physicians, Frank would pull through, and the credit, they agreed,
belonged to a fellow convict, one who'd once before helped buy time for
him. As Dr. Rosenberg freely acknowledged: "Dr. McNaughton saved
Frank's life."

MILLEDGEVILLE 55I

The same day most Georgians learned that Leo Frank would survive
("Frank's Condition Steadily Improving," read the Constitution's banner),
John Tucker Dorsey waded into a packed conference room at the state
capitol in Atlanta for a meeting of the House penitentiary committee. At
the top of the agenda were a number of legislative resolutions demanding
that the Prison Commission investigate whether William Creen had acted
alone or at the behest of others. From Dorsey's vantage, no good could
come of any inquiry that raised the specter of an outside conspiracy. Hence,
shortly after he gaveled the session to order, he tabled the resolutions, ced-
ing the floor to an ally who introduced a motion to give the penitentiary
committee the authority to conduct the probe. Dorsey threw his weight
behind the proposal, for if it was enacted, he could at least run the show,
shielding himself and others from exposure. Not that he allowed as much
for public consumption, contending instead: "To let the commission do the
investigating means that we turn the case over to their own jury." Yet
despite Dorsey's efforts, his committee— the majority believing the law left
them without recourse— voted 14 to 9 against him. Several hours later,
Chairman Davison announced that at week's end, he and his commission-
ers would journey to Milledgeville. The next morning, Governor Harris
declared that he would accompany the men.

To the lynching brethren, Dorsey's failure to take control of the Creen
inquiry constituted another setback. Now, in just five days, a group of newly
emboldened prison commissioners and, more ominously, the governor,
would be at the prison farm asking questions. Yet Herbert Clay, Judge Newt
Morris, former governor Brown and the others were not about to be
deterred. Animated by the same convictions that had spurred them from
the start and too deeply enmeshed to back down, they intended to see this
thing through until the end.

Thus it was that the Cobb Countians undertook to wire the Creen inves-
tigation. As they'd done in the past, they would generally operate behind
the scenes. Yet there's no doubt as to the cards they held. Nor is there any
doubt as to the identities of those against whom they would play them.

At this juncture, Governor Harris presented the greatest stumbling
block in the Mariettans' path. Not only had he helped derail the initial raid,
he had come out early on against vigilantism. All this notwithstanding, the
governor wasn't the insurmountable barrier to prejudice and violence that
he seemed. To begin with, it was Harris's perceived unwillingness to give
Frank a fair shake that had set off the scramble to convene the clemency
hearings prior to the expiration of Slaton's term. Moreover, since taking
office, Harris had already proved that he was unwilling to place himself

552 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

between a group of influential toughs and a terrorized Jew. The relevant
incident had occurred in the little municipality of Canton. There, a mob said
to have included the mayor and the sheriff had ordered merchant Sam
Cohen to get out of town. When Cohen didn't oblige, the rowdies smashed
in his storefront. Later, they tied a stick of dynamite to his door. It was then
that a gentile friend of Cohen's beseeched Harris to intercede:

We believe it is time that strenuous steps were being taken to investi-
gate this matter and place the blame on the guilty parties.

It is the general opinion that men higher up in Canton are at the head of
this gang of law breakers and we believe that this Jew is entitled to protec-
tion and the peaceable pursuit of his trade as well as others here in town,
and we want to implore you to take immediate action to clear up this out-
rage and prosecute the guilty parties.

Through his secretary, Harris replied:

Governor Harris duly received your special delivery letter of July the
seventh, and at the same time had a call from Mr. Cohen . . .

Under the Constitutional limitations, the Governor must act in cases of
this kind according to certain specified forms.

If you can furnish sufficient evidence to the effect that the Sheriff and
Mayor are in a conspiracy to intimidate Mr. Cohen, or to do him violence,
the matter could then be taken before the Grand Jury or presented to the
Legislature.

If you will lay the evidence upon which your belief is founded, as
expressed in your letter, before the Governor, he will be glad to suggest the
proper procedure.

Harris's message couldn't have been much clearer— Cohen and his would-
be savior were on their own.

But even if Governor Harris had been made of sterner stuff, the lynching
brethren would have possessed ample reason to believe they could bend
him to their collective will, for they had ties to him via both the ballot box
and a son-in-law. For starters, Harris never would have been elected had
it not been for Tom Watson. At a pivotal moment of the 1914 campaign,
the Sage had endorsed Harris, and just as former governor Brown re-
mained hostage to a similar favor, so, too, did he. Ultimately, though, the
Cobb County boys were linked to Harris through family— the governor's
youngest daughter, Fannie, was married to Herbert Clay's best friend.
Campbell Wallace, Jr., was secretary of the state's powerful railroad com-

MILLEDGEVILLE 553

mission, and he and the former Fannie Harris lived around the corner from
the Clays. As leading members of Marietta society, the couples regularly
mixed, often entertaining together. It was all quite cozy and, for Leo Frank,
terribly inauspicious.

Splendid a hand as the Mariettans held, they couldn't just strong-arm a
governor, and in the days leading up to the investigation into the Creen
incident, they applied pressure only obliquely. They would not be so subtle
when it came to those other potentially troubling individuals— the prison
commissioners. Bluntly put, they would attempt to buy them. Which was
why during this same week, John Tucker Dorsey asked the legislature to
appropriate $30,000 for the construction of a sewage plant and new dormi-
tories for Negro and female inmates at the prison farm.

Governor Harris spent the night before the inquiry at his family home in
Macon, making the short trip to Milledgeville early the next morning with
Commissioner Rainey, Adjutant General Nash and John Tucker Dorsey.
Commissioners Davison and Patterson, who'd arrived a day before, and
Warden Smith met the men at the train station, and by 6:15, they were all
sitting down to a country breakfast at Superintendent Burke's house.

Significantly, the statehouse types invited the numerous reporters gath-
ered at the prison farm to cover the probe to eat with them. For those
calling the shots, the care and feeding of these boys— who included the
Journal's Starr, the Constitution's Ned Mcintosh and a young scrapper
named John W. Hammond, who ran a one-man Atlanta bureau serving the
Macon Telegraph and the Augusta Chronicle— was paramount. This was not
a time to take the press for granted.

The first order of business was to familiarize Governor Harris with the
penitentiary. As he'd never before visited the place, the idea was not with-
out merit. Yet from the outset, the undertaking itself felt scripted. In fact,
whether the investigators were touring barracks or tromping over the
grounds, they met with encounters that seemed designed to make the story
other than what it was. At the tubercular ward, for instance, a group of ema-
ciated inmates begged Harris for pardons so they "could go home to die."
The reporters could not take notes fast enough. Even more piteous— and
more diverting— was six-year-old Bessie Stripling's plea to the governor. As
the men approached the main dormitory, the girl, whose father was serving
a life sentence, ran up to Harris, tugged at his sleeve and asked: "Won't you
please turn my papa loose? He is sick and there is nobody to work for us at
home." Visibly moved, the governor patted the child on the head and prom-
ised to grant her wish.

554 A ND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

In the end, however, Creen could not be avoided, and around noon, the
delegation was shown to the cot to which he was now chained.

"Creen, have you told your story?" asked Harris.
"No," Frank's assailant replied.
"Are you ready to tell it now?"
"Yes, I'll tell it to you."

And that, as John W. Hammond pointedly observed, "was the entire extent
of the 'open' investigation." The rest of the inquiry would be held behind
closed doors.

The parts of the probe that mattered, then, were conducted free from
reportorial scrutiny. As armed guards stood watch outside the warden's
office, Harris and Nash alone questioned Creen. After an hour or so, the
man was led away, and the prison commissioners rejoined the group. After
debriefing Warden Smith, the party made its way to the room where Frank
was recovering. The intention was to quiz him, too, but as he was still having
trouble speaking, the investigators could do no more than observe doctors
dress his wound.

When it was all over, the governor reconvened the newspapermen and
announced the inquiry's findings: Creen had acted of his own accord, moti-
vated not by outside forces but, oddly enough, by opposition to them. "He
said he had heard a great deal of talk by the people in the prison of the dan-
ger that would come to the place if Frank was kept here," Harris asserted.
"He said he knew from what he had read from the papers that there was
danger of an attack on the place by a mob; that if the attack was made the
mob would shoot through the windows and a lot of people would be killed;
that the guards would shoot at the mob and there would be a lot of killing
on both sides. He said he thought that over and came to the conclusion that
it would be his duty to save the people here from danger."

With that, Governor Harris was finished with the task that had brought
him to Milledgeville, yet there was one other matter to address. Like every
other official who'd inspected the prison farm that summer, he was appalled
by its many inadequacies, and in closing, he vowed to ask the legislature to
appropriate a hefty $50,000 for improvements.

From John Tucker Dorsey's perspective, the day could hardly have gone
better, and the headlines atop the next morning's Atlanta papers were bet-
ter Still. GOVERNOR TOUCHED BY THE SAD PLIGHT OF MANY CONVICTS,

declared the Constitution, gov. Harris to ask $50,000 for building at
the state farm, roared the Journal. In sum, the reporters downplayed the
investigation, preferring instead to emphasize Harris's humane response to
the inmates' benighted living conditions. True, there was no reason for the

MILLEDGEVILLE 555

press to doubt the governor's determination that Creen had been an inde-
pendent operator. Frank's assailant was too unstable to have been enlisted
by a conspiracy. Still, the Constitution's account didn't even mention the
inquiry until an inside page. And as for any discussion of the plot actually
afoot, it went unrecorded.

There was, however, one dissenting voice, and it belonged to John W.
Hammond. In a dispatch that dominated front pages in both Augusta and
Macon, Hammond noted:

So far as what caused the attack on Leo M. Frank by William Creen is
concerned, whether or not there were surrounding circumstances which
might have thrown a different light on what the public knows or has read
of the affair; why Creen was so situated that he should be able to smuggle
a knife into the sleeping quarters of a lot of convicts, I know no more now
than I did before I came to Milledgeville. In fact, if there was any investi-
gation of the attack on Leo M. Frank at the state farm today, I can't say of
my personal knowledge.

I am sorry that I can't write other— concerning the "investigation" —
than that it was a frost. There wasn't any investigation as the public would
expect an investigation to be; there wasn't anything brought out, as the
public naturally expected would be.

In the end was there reason to promise the public an "investigation"?

Upon returning to Atlanta, the various state officials who had partici-
pated in the Creen inquiry vigorously attacked Hammond's piece. Asserted
the governor: "My reason for not allowing the press to hear Creen's state-
ment" was that he "stated positively that he would tell his story to no one
except the governor." Meanwhile, Prison Commission chairman Davison
dismissed the article as "absurd."

Yet even had the authorities said nothing, it's unlikely that the story
would have prompted much of an uproar, for in the wake of the investiga-
tion there was no longer anyone at the capitol with both the power and the
inclination to look into Hammond's charges. Indeed, there was now no
longer anyone with the power and the inclination to forestall the lynching
brethren.

Whatever Governor Harris may have thought of Frank prior to visiting
the prison farm, he left disliking the man. Though there were immediately
rumors to this effect— among them, a pernicious and utterly unfounded
one circulated by Watson maintaining that "Creen told Governor Harris he
cut Frank because Frank had tried to sodomize him"— it would be ten years
before Harris confirmed them in print. In his memoirs, he revealed the
determining moment:

556 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

I went into [Frank's] room while the doctor was dressing the wound. The
gash extended from ear to ear and was so frightful in appearance that I
wondered at his being alive. While the doctor was washing the wound
Frank coughed, and I asked the doctor immediately, with a good deal of
sympathy in my voice: "Won't that wound attack his lungs before it heals?"
When I asked this, Frank laughed— a queer sort of laugh— a laugh that
showed, at least to me, a hard, careless heart, and the doubt, which I had
about his guilt, was lessened greatly, as I heard the laugh, and looked into
his face.

Though there is no evidence that Harris's negative impression of Frank led
him to endorse the Mariettans' plan, there was no need for him to endorse
it. All he had to do was stay out of the way.

General Nash also seems to have departed the prison farm resigned to
the inevitable, chiefly because Harris was. Not only had the governor just
reappointed Nash as head of the state militia, but the governor's oldest son,
Walter, served as the general's liaison to the legislature. In short, the sole
Georgians authorized to order out the guard in the event of a raid on
Milledgeville were a yoked team, one for which others held the reins.

Finally, just four days after the Creen probe, the general assembly signed
off, too, approving a $30,000 appropriation for the prison farm. Plainly, many
of the legislators were blind to the hidden agenda here. The money would,
after all, pay for much-needed brick and mortar. But in truth, the vote
marked the denouement of the intrigue that had begun over a month earlier
with John Tlicker Dorsey's appointment as chairman of the penitentiary
committee. The conspirators had succeeded in getting the state to finance
what would now come to pass. Georgia was going into the lynching business.

Having twice been reprieved, first by a besieged governor, then by a physi-
cian convicted of murder, Leo Frank believed he owed his life to nothing
less than divine intervention. "Thanks be to God, I am recovering nicely,"
he began an early- August letter to Dan Lehon, the Burns detective who'd
nearly met his own demise investigating the case. "It was indeed providen-
tial that good medical help was so near at hand. At that, the doctors say my
recovery is marvelous. Surely, God has let me live and aided me in this dark
hour for a brighter day, which must be near at hand."

Though Frank was still being attended by three physicians, his wife had
now largely assumed day-to-day responsibility for his care. Lucille, who'd
taken up residence at the Alfords', arrived at the prison farm early each
morning and was ushered into the room adjacent to the warden's office

MILLEDGEVILLE 557

where Leo continued to recuperate. There, after bathing and feeding her
husband, she sorted through his correspondence, deciding which merited
a personal reply and which could be answered with a mimeographed
letter. Then, she sat by his bed, holding his hand. "Mrs. Frank has been, in
this painful ordeal, my ministering angel," the wounded man confided to
Lehon.

Unbeknownst to Leo, once Lucille was done with her nursing duties, she
spent the day's remaining hours working as his ambassador. In this, she was
following the instructions of Herbert Haas, who after it was certain that
Frank would live had written her:

In as much as Leo is at the farm, you must continue to do all in your power
to win the friendship and kindness of those who are in charge, not for the
purpose of getting anything beyond what is Leo's due and right, but in
order that there may be no hesitancy about his getting it. It . . . depends on
you, and I have every confidence in your ability to handle well the situa-
tion. Do not let Leo read this letter.

Lucille also handled another extremely sensitive matter— Leo's finances.
Fearful of calling attention to the fact that her husband's medical care
was being underwritten by northern Jews, she paid doctors from her own
account, which Herbert Haas replenished whenever Albert Lasker mailed a
check. Haas, who'd been the most cautious of Frank's lawyers, was so intent
on disguising the actual source of this funding that when Lucille used a Yid-
dishism for money in a communication to him, he forcefully rebuked her:

Please, in the future, do not write on a postal card anything like the
word "muzzumah." You cannot be too careful.

By this point, though, one word on the back of a postcard wasn't going to
increase the anti-Semitism rampant in Georgia— especially not with Hal
Reid's movie premiering in New York.

Prosaically entitled Leo M. Frank and Governor Slaton, the picture was
both a documentary and a distortion. Here were the first moving images of
the dramatis personae of the tale that had so long captivated America. Yet
vivid as the shots were, there was no effort at balance, no mention of trou-
bling facts or of Slaton's conflict of interests. In other words, this was
just the movie its subject had wanted— and exactly the one New Yorkers
wanted to see. Extolled Variety's critic: "Remarkable." Hoping to capitalize
on the extensive coverage the case had received, the Loew's chain pro-

558 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

moted the picture as the million dollar publicity feature! and
booked it into eight theaters, including ones at Lincoln and Greeley
Squares and on Avenue B.

Yet however favorably Yankees reacted to Reid's movie, the sole South-
ern reviewer whose opinion counted— Tom Watson— viewed it as yet
another insult. Had the Sage confined his commentary to the picture's lack
of objectivity, his critique would have been justifiable, but instead, he once
again vented his animus against Frank's coreligionists. "Why Do They Keep
Up the Big Money Campaign Against the People and the Courts of Geor-
gia?" asked the headline atop the August 12 Jeffersonian, beneath which
Watson scornfully explained:

There is a Moving Picture circuit controlled by Marcus Loew.

Marcus is doubtless a worthy descendant of Moses.

Like most gentlemen from Jerusalem, Marcus loves money, and never
knows what it is to get enough.

Marcus is advertising Jack Slaton as an asset in his business, and is evi-
dently expecting to coin many ducats thereby.

Perhaps the rich Jews believe that they are entitled to get some of their
money back— the money which gave Burns a front-page display for more
than a year and then gave Slaton an army and a war-zone of his own.

Marcus Loew advertises in The Billboard his new attraction, which he
aptly terms,

"The Million Dollar Publicity Feature."

Israel's true ends thereby further enumerated, Watson brought his perora-
tion to a resounding— and familiar— finish:

Let the rich Jews beware!

THE NEXT JEW WHO DOES WHAT FRANK DID IS GOING
TO GET EXACTLY THE SAME THING THAT WE GIVE TO
NEGRO RAPISTS!

This same week, former governor Joseph Brown— in a position paper
published in the Macon Telegraph— echoed the Sage's clarion call: The time
had come for "the people to form mobs."

Monday, August 16, dawned oppressively hot in Milledgeville— by midday,
the temperature had hit 90 degrees inside the prison barracks. Yet despite
the weather, Leo Frank's spirits were soaring. Nearly a month had passed
since Creen's attack, and the patient was well on his way to a full recovery.

MILLEDGEVILLE 559

Sitting at the table in the room next to the warden's office, wearing only a
white, monogrammed nightshirt, he wrote Collier's C. P. Connolly:

I have gained and am gaining right along in strength. My appetite is good
and I sleep well. I can move my head and neck (within limitations) reason-
ably well for the time being and this will improve a whole lot in the course
of a few weeks. My wound is all healed except in one little place where
drainage still obtains. This also will be healed in a few days. In time, I think
I will be all right again.

The prognosis out of the way, Frank devoted the remainder of the letter to
the topic that prior to the knifing had loomed largest in his mind: the cause.
Connolly's connections in New York publishing and politics were extensive,
and Frank wanted to know everything, asking whether he'd spoken to Hal
Reid or seen his movie ("He thought he could help") or read the latest
Puck ("They sure stick it to Watson"). He also requested a favor. Con-
nolly's Collier's articles had been published in hardback as The Truth About
the Frank Case, and Frank hoped he would send Warden Smith ("a friend")
an autographed copy.

Overjoyed to be once again engaged with the outside world, Frank wrote
several other cheerful and inquisitive letters on this long, hot day. "How do
you view the recent changes, unrest and present situation in Atlanta?" he
asked Dr. Benjamin Wildauer. "I get the Journal daily but it is hard for me
to glean anything therefrom. I know you are posted on the 'inside.' "

Undoubtedly, Frank understood the level of antipathy abroad in Geor-
gia. In her last letter, his mother had written him:

T.W. ... is not ashamed nor afraid it seems to me; he has a criminal mind
and perverted brains. There are . . . others in the same boat with him.

Yet he'd persuaded himself that the hostility would soon end, and that the
fight for exoneration would resume. Indeed, he'd just received fresh ammu-
nition from William Smith in the form of a box containing copies of Berry
Benson's pamphlet arguing that Jim Conley had authored the murder
notes and was thus Mary Phagan's killer. As Frank informed Dr. Wildauer,
he was already putting the pamphlets to use:

I am doing "missionary work" with them in Milledgeville . . . Bill wanted
them given away.

Late in the afternoon, Lucille dropped by for a long visit. Tuesday, Leo
was scheduled to rejoin the general prison population, and the two would

560 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

have fewer chances to see each other. That notwithstanding, there was rea-
son for happiness, and around five, Lucille returned to the Alfords', her
heart lifting as well.

Not long after Frank's wife left, the prison commissioners arrived at the
prison farm from Atlanta. Ostensibly, Rainey, Davison and Patterson had
come to discuss the construction about to begin on the place. But in fact,
they were there to do the lynching brethren's bidding, for even as dusk
was descending, seven automobiles were racing south through the Georgia
countryside toward Milledgeville.

Under the command of Black Newt Morris, George Daniell and Gordon
Gann, the chosen 25 had departed Marietta during the afternoon on a stag-
gered schedule so as not to attract attention. At a prearranged location, the
drivers had reconnoitered and from there on, the group stuck together.
Each of the vigilantes carried a rifle and a pistol; some wore goggles. Wire
cutters and a box of explosives rode in one car, a thick manila rope with the
noose already knotted in another.

Around nine, the cars reached the outskirts of the prison farm, where the
electrician, Yellow Jacket Brown— who'd spent the past several days scout-
ing about Milledgeville on his motorcycle noting the location of phone
lines— was waiting. Shortly thereafter, phones throughout most of the town
went dead.

TWENTY-ONE

The Lynching of Leo Frank

The roar of seven automobiles, headlights dimmed, tearing up the
long prison farm drive so distressed a trusty named F. J.Turner that,
as he later put it, he "exhausted every available energy and effort to
prevail upon the night watchman in charge, Mr. Hester, to send Mr. Frank
out the back way, under guard, as he would be protected." Hester, however,
improbably rejoined that the vehicles carried joyriders, thus during the cru-
cial seconds it took the cars to reach Superintendent Burke's house, he did
nothing. When the lead car rolled to a halt and armed men bounded out,
Tlirner was "then dead certain that it was a mob," and he again implored
Hester to move Frank, but again to no avail. Shortly thereafter, Burke
answered an insistent rapping on his door. As he subsequently related:
"When I passed the threshold, two strong men grabbed me and in an
instant snapped handcuffs on my wrists. Four others stood guard over me,
two with shotguns and two with heavy pistols, and I was marched up to the
penitentiary building." In the meantime, the rest of the party had pro-
ceeded to Warden Smith's home. There, roughly the same scenario was
enacted, although once divested of his prized pump-action shotgun, Smith
was allowed to remain with his terrified wife under the watchful eye of
Lawrence Haney.

Though the Mariettans were entering what was ostensibly hostile terri-
tory, they approached the prison's barbed-wire-entangled gate with a bra-
vura suggesting that they expected cooperation. Only two wore masks,
and no one betrayed any anxiety. Yet lest anyone think they actually were
paying a social call, they kept their guns trained on Burke, and upon reach-
ing the entrance, they got busy with their wire cutters. Afterward, Tom
Lawlater, the trusty encharged with the keys, told a reporter: "I saw they
meant business, and there was nothing for me to do but open the gate."

Just that easily, then, the vigilantes were behind the walls. In the dark, the
compound presented something of an obstacle course. But not only were
the men carrying a map of the grounds, an insider had put them wise to the
fact that Frank had yet to be returned to the general population. So after
assuring a few startled prisoners that they meant them no harm, a desig-
nated contingent dashed up the steps of the main building, heading directly

562 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

to the room adjacent to the warden's office where the star inmate was bil-
leted and where they encountered their only resistance. This from a trusty
who extinguished an oil lamp beside Frank's door.

"Come here with a match," a voice barked.

"I haven't got one," replied the trusty.

"Well, you had better get one damned quick," the voice insisted, its
owner unholstering his pistol.

The lamp was immediately relit.

The group found Frank awake but still in bed, wearing his mono-
grammed white nightshirt. When he asked if he could dress, he was point-
edly informed that where he was going, he wouldn't need clothes. He was
then handcuffed and escorted to the stairs. There, two men took him by the
arms, two by the legs and another by the hair, dragging him outside and
throwing him into the rear of one of the waiting cars. As Frank, moaning
from the rough treatment, stared up at his captors, they dangled the thick
manila rope they'd carried with them in his face.

With that, the Mariettans' work at the farm was finished. As they piled
back into their automobiles, one of their lieutenants announced that they
intended to take Frank to Cobb County and hang him over Mary Phagan's
grave. On the heels of this declaration, Burke asked to be uncuffed, but
when told he'd have to accompany the party, he retorted, "Damned if I go
anywhere with you." Whereupon someone fitting the description of Black
Newt Morris (the Georgian reported that he brandished a whip) bellowed,
"All right, boys; make for the swamps," and the seven cars, lights now blaz-
ing, sped off. All told, the vigilantes had needed but ten minutes to abduct
the nation's most celebrated prisoner. Astonishingly, not a shot was fired.
The only hitch was that in their haste, they'd forgotten Haney, the man
assigned to cover Warden Smith. Hence no sooner had the automobiles
turned onto the highway than two turned back, stopping at the warden's
residence just long enough to reclaim their lost lamb. Then they were gone
for good.

In the raid's immediate aftermath, Burke was joined in the prison yard by
Smith and Commissioners Davison, Rainey and Patterson, and with varying
degrees of sincerity, they went through the motions of mounting a response.
But even if each of the men had been in earnest, they would have been
unable to take action, for as they quickly discovered, the phone lines into
Milledgeville had been cut. Similarly, the gas line of Smith's car had been
slit. Eventually, some Negro inmates awakened the farm bookkeeper, who
found a vehicle in working order and drove into town with the news— yet
here, too, Yellow Jacket Brown had done his job, severing not just the phone
lines leading to the homes of state militia captain J. H. Ennis and Baldwin
County sheriff S. L.Terry but all except one of the long-distance lines con-

THE LYNCHING OF LEO FRANK 563

necting Milledgeville to the outside world. That lone line led to Augusta.
Thus around midnight— two hours after the lynch party had departed— a
bulletin was finally transmitted, and officials in counties that lay on the
direct route between the farm and Marietta were alerted. Soon, Fulton
County deputies were patrolling the highways leading into Cobb County
from the south, and reporters were making their way to the cemetery where
little Mary was buried.

By this juncture, of course, the caravan bearing Leo Frank had disap-
peared into the night, although not as utterly as its leaders had hoped. At
the Little River, an unbridged stream ten miles north of Milledgeville, the
vigilantes lost precious time when they were unable to locate the home of
a ferry operator. But far from panicking, the men used the delay to cut
phone lines at surrounding country stores and fire rounds of ammunition
into the woods. The salvos were heard throughout the area, diverting an
initial posse from Milledgeville and prompting early reports— bannered
atop the Georgian's first extra— that Frank had been shot to death. Yet
such wasn't the case, for once the group finally negotiated the river, they
pressed ahead at a steady clip, their charge sitting quietly between young
Luther and Emmet Burton in the second car, his shirt luminous among the
galluses and wool hats.

After barreling through Eatonton, the birthplace of Joel Chandler Har-
ris, the Mariettans plunged north into the backroads briar patch of such
rural counties as Jasper, Newton, Walton and Barrow, all the while keeping
far to the east of Atlanta. It remains unclear whether this had always been
the intended route or whether the group's leaders changed on the fly,
responding to a tip from some sympathizer along the way who alerted them
to the fact that the main arteries were being watched. Whichever, the choice
was inspired, allowing the men to outflank any pursuers. With arrogant
impunity, they raced over ioo miles through the cotton fields of middle
Georgia, their passage witnessed only by the random darkened farmhouse,
evidenced only by the cloud of red dust billowing in their wake.

Somewhere during the trip, the occupants of Frank's car briefly engaged
him in conversation. Citing a source whose bona fides were "beyond all
question," the Associated Press later reported its gist:

"Is there anything you would like to say before your execution?"

At first there was no reply. Then, slowly and perhaps painfully, the
recently wounded man shook his head.

"No," he said. The word was scarcely audible above the throb of the
engine.

For a long time following the only sound was that of the automobiles.
Then Frank was asked if he had killed the Phagan girl, and the captors say

564 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

he made no reply. This question was not repeated again until near the jour-
ney's end, and again, it is said, there was no reply. The final interrogation
was:

"Is there nothing you wish to say?"

"No."

These four questions constituted the sole conversation in the death car
as it sped along the miles which were steadily bringing Frank nearer to
Cobb County.

Despite its roundabout route and one breakdown— Gordon Gann's car
had to be abandoned by the roadside— the party made excellent time, and
about daybreak it reached Alpharetta, 20 miles northeast of Marietta,
which meant it would be approaching its destination as if returning not
from Milledgeville but from the North Georgia mountains.

Exactly what happened in Alpharetta— in 1915, the seat of now-defunct
Milton County— is uncertain. Subsequently, Judge Newt Morris and a
young protege from Canton named John Wood contended that since the
Blue Ridge Circuit Court was slated to convene there later that morning,
they simply happened to be up and about when the group came through.
Even 75 years after the fact, Herman Spence, during the 1930s Wood's law
partner, was offering this version of events: "John Wood went out and took
a walk and in the course of the walk met some cars and there was a sheeted
figure in the middle of one, and he was convinced it was Leo Frank. He
went and got Newt Morris." Maybe so, but if the long-accepted story is true,
Judge Newt and Wood were early risers, for the men transporting Frank hit
town around 6:00 a.m. A more likely scenario is that Morris and Wood had
awakened at that hour for the purpose of joining the party on the last leg of
its trip. Regardless, the two— traveling in Wood's Model T— weren't far
behind the group as they left Alpharetta, tore through Roswell, then turned
onto Roswell Road, along which they proceeded until they reached Frey's
Gin, where Leo Frank's journey would conclude.

Though Frey's Gin was two miles east of Marietta, there can be little
doubt that the vigilance committee— the vow to hang Frank above Mary
Phagan's grave notwithstanding— had always intended to lynch him here.
Later, there would be talk suggesting that fear of being caught by the rising
sun had prompted the party to pull up shy of its objective, but like so much
that would come out of Cobb County, such talk was calculated to obscure
the truth. And the truth was that the gin belonged to the man— former sher-
iff William Frey — who had tied the noose. Moreover, waiting at the site was
a piece of furniture essential to the job: a table. Finally, the location was not
without its symbolic resonance, in that it faced the Benton homeplace

THE LYNCHING OF LEO FRANK 565

where little Mary, prior to moving to Atlanta, had lived and where her kin-
folk still resided.

Frey's Gin was surrounded by a grove of trees, and it was into this small
woods that Frank's captors marched him. The doomed man, his bare toes
sliding over moist grass, never faltered. According to the most authoritative
report, "he behaved throughout with a calmness and dignity and an utter
lack of panic." After walking 200 feet, the group stopped before a sturdy
oak, and someone looped the business end of the manila rope over a high
limb. Meantime, the table that would serve as the platform was put into
position.

While these preparations were being made, Frank apparently asked for
and was granted permission to write a note to Lucille, jotting a few sen-
tences in a foreign language some thought to be Yiddish but was almost cer-
tainly German. Then— speaking either in response to a specific question or
to himself; the accounts vary— he uttered what amounted to a final state-
ment: "I think more of my wife and my mother than I do of my own life."The
remark's authenticity is evidently indisputable. (Although as one reporter
noted: "In telling this story it must be remembered that we have not Frank's
version and never will have it. We have only the lynchers' word for it.")
Its meaning, however, is ambiguous. Whether, as admirers subsequently
asserted, Frank was voicing a noble sentiment, or, as detractors countered,
he was skirting the truth for fear of devastating his family, no one can say. As
it had been in the beginning, so it was at the end.

With soft morning sunlight dappling down through the late-summer
foliage, the vigilantes blindfolded Frank, bound his feet together, cinched a
khaki cloth around his exposed lower torso, lifted him onto the table and
placed the noose over his head. After agreeing to return Frank's wedding
band to Lucille, a man identified in most reports as simply "the leader" pro-
nounced the court's sentence and kicked over the table. The time was 7:05.
The man was Judge Newt Morris.

The first witnesses to arrive on the scene— or so the cover story had it— were
William Frey, a friend of Frey's from Augusta named Walter Yaun, Marietta
Journal editor Josiah Carter, Jr., and merchant Gus Benson. Supposedly,
Frey and Yaun had been in his yard picking peaches when the caravan hur-
tled by, and though the ex-sheriff said he caught a glimpse of Frank and sus-
pected "something was doing," he claimed that he initially did nothing. In
fact, Frey said he changed clothes and ate breakfast before driving into Mari-
etta. There, he maintained, he met Carter, who informed him the cars never
made it to the cemetery, and Benson, who told him he'd seen them turn "on

566 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

the road there by your gin." Only then, Frey said, did he realize a lynching
might have occurred on his property. Only then, he said, did he return home,
walk into the grove, and spy the body. "Yonder it is," Frey said he exclaimed,
and for all his account's bald-faced absurdities, yonder it indeed was.

Leo Frank, head snapped back, chin resting in the noose's bottom coil,
dangled from above. Though half an hour had elapsed since the deed was
done, his body was still warm, for unlike those wretches dropped through
the gallows' trapdoor in a putatively humane hanging, Frank had not died
instantly. Rather, he had slowly suffocated, struggling so ferociously he'd
ripped open his neck wound. Blood oozed down his shirtfront. As the Con-
stitution would grimly note: "He undoubtedly flayed the air."

By the time Frey wandered into his woods, all of Georgia and, for that
matter, much of America, was awaiting word of Frank's fate. Not only had
Atlantans awakened to front-page headlines (speeding mob seizes
frank, boomed the Georgian)', so, too, had the inhabitants of most every
other city in the land. Intoned the New York Times: leo m. frank kid-
napped AT NIGHT FROM GEORGIA STATE PRISON FARM BY ARMED MEN IN

an automobile. Nowhere, however, was interest more avid than in Mari-
etta, where agitated locals had been congregating on the square since dawn.
It was to this audience that an allegedly anonymous source— speaking
by phone to Deputy Sheriff Hicks, who had himself made the trip to
Milledgeville— broke the news: "Leo Frank's hanging to a limb down here
near Frey's Gin. Retribution!" And so the spectacle began.

From Marietta, from neighboring farms and villages, and finally, from
Atlanta, they came. Observed the Atlanta Journal's Rogers Winter:

They swarmed the road from both directions. They seemed to rise up
out of the ground, so fast they came. The automobiles came careening,
recklessly disregarding life and limb of occupants. Horse-drawn vehicles
came at a gallop. Pedestrians came running.

The vehicles stopped in the road at the grove and soon packed the road
and overflowed into the fields. As the vehicles would stop, their occupants
would jump out and run to the grove, bending forward, panting, wild-eyed.

Women came. Children came. Even babes in arms.

By 8:30, over one thousand people had gathered, and scores more were
arriving each minute.

Initially, at least, the gawkers conducted themselves with a degree of
restraint. Noted the Georgian's O. B. Keeler:

In a terrible way it was like some religious rite. Watching the curiously
reverent manner of those people, a manner of thankfulness and of grave

THE LYNCHING OF LEO FRANK 567

satisfaction, it was borne in with tremendous force what the feeling must
be on those Cobb County men and women toward the man who they
believed had slain Mary Phagan.

The journey to Frey's gin was a sort of dreadful pilgrimage.

"I couldn't bear to look at another human being, hanging like that," said
one woman. "But this— this is different. It is all right. It is— the justice of
God."

Among the men there was evident a grim and terrible satisfaction.

"They did a good job," was the comment, spoken in many tones, but
with a curious inflection that was always the same. "A good job."

Yet however solemnly the crowd at first comported itself, however con-
tent most seemed merely to gaze upon Frank's body as if it were a gaffed
tarpon, the prize catch, the prospect that things could get out of control
quickly became apparent. As the numerous photographs taken that morn-
ing suggest, the gamut of emotions ranged from jubilation to rage to some-
thing approaching sexual rapture. In the background, boys tossed straw
boaters. To the side, rambunctious sorts jostled for better vantage. Up close,
a couple fervently embraced. And in front, a slack-jawed young man clung
to Frank's distended blue hand. Commented Rogers Winter:

A horrible sight met the eyes of the people who were first to arrive at
the grove, and a still more horrible sight met the eyes of the later arrivals,
who found not only the body swaying but surging around it a closely
packed mass of men whose excitement was something fearful.

That Frank's inanimate form inspired near hysteria was hardly surpris-
ing, for of all the tribal rituals by which the white South asserted itself, none
released more primitive energies than a lynching. And of all the men who
ever wound up at the end of a lynch mob's rope, few conjured as many
explosive associations as this one. Murderer, sodomite, Jew, Yankee— these
were fighting words to everyone gathered at Frey's Gin. Seventy-eight
years later, Narvel Lassiter— who was 9 in 1915 and whose mesmerized vis-
age peers out from just behind the tree in several of the lynching pictures—
distinctly recalled making a connection between the blood seeping from
Frank's neck wound and the Watson-spawned rumor that Creen had
inflicted the wound in response to Frank's homosexual advances. "Grand-
dad told me a lot about it," said Lassiter, "and he knew a lot." Others leaped
to even uglier conclusions. As the cloth girdling Frank's waist was only
loosely tied, his genitals were, from several angles, visible. In the eyes of
beholders unaware that death by hanging causes the extremities to engorge
with fluid, here was the livid root of the victim's degeneracy.

568 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

The longer Frank's body hung at Frey's Gin and the larger the throng—
which would eventually approach 3,000— grew, the more likely it became
that some final atrocity would be committed. Already, in fact, the bolder
lads had cut off the dead man's shirtsleeves. Then they'd knifed away the
rope that had bound his feet. Though the majority of people, contended one
writer, opposed "Apache-like barbarities," they were unwilling to counter
the "rough element." They would go where they were led.

Such was the atmosphere when Robert E. Lee Howell— the truculent,
hard-drinking firebrand who'd been so conspicuously excluded from the
lynch party— announced his arrival on the scene by discharging the con-
tents of his pistol into the air. Bareheaded, coatless, his eyes blazing, Howell
was, by all accounts, in a frenzy, and after pushing his way through the
crowd, he threw up his hands, clenched his fists and shaking them at Frank's
body began to chant: "Now we've got you! You won't murder any more lit-
tle innocent girls! We've got you now! ! We've got you now! ! !"

Howell's effect on the assembled multitude was galvanic, and the multi-
tude, in turn, galvanized Howell. "Every once in a while when he paused,"
reported Rogers Winter, "some man in the crowd would give a yell, and the
crowd would join in the yell, and it would get higher and higher, and the
sound of it would fill the little grove and echo back and forth. These demon-
strations seemed to fan the fury of the man by the body. His gesticulations
became more violent, his raving words came faster and faster from his
mouth, pouring out of him like a torrent."

The moment had come, and Howell wasn't going to be denied a second
time. Again addressing himself directly to Frank's body, he proclaimed:
"They won't put any monument over you! They are not going to get you!
They are not going to get a piece of you as big as a cigar!"

It was at this juncture that Judge Newt Morris returned to Frey's Gin.

"Hear me, men," Morris pleaded after clambering atop a tree stump.
"Citizens of Cobb County, listen to me, will you?"

A hush fell over the grove.

"Whoever did this thing," he began.

"God bless him, whoever he was!" Howell interjected.

"Whoever did this thing," the judge again began, patting the wild man on
the head as if he were a fractious child, "did a thorough job."

"They shore did," echoed the throng.

"Whoever did this thing," Morris repeated, "left nothing more for us to
do. Little Mary Phagan is vindicated. Her foul murder is avenged. Now I
ask you, I appeal to you, as citizens of Cobb County in the good name of
our county, not to do more. I appeal to you to let the undertaker take it."

No sooner had the judge uttered these words than Howell exploded.
"We are not going to let the undertaker have it!" he shrieked. "We are

THE LYNCHING OF LEO FRANK 569

going to burn it! That's what we are going to do! Come on, boys! Let's burn
the dirty thing!"

"Men," Morris forcefully rejoined, "don't do anything to this body. Let
the undertaker have it. The man has a father and a mother and whatever we
think of him, they're entitled to have the body of their son. Men, I appeal to
you for the good name of our county. Let all who favor giving the body over
to the undertaker say, 'Aye.' "

A chorus of "ayes" rang out.

"Now, let all who oppose it say, 'No.' "

"No!" Howell alone importuned.

After a show of hands ratified the verdict, Morris jumped to the ground
and dashed to the rear of the crowd, calling for the undertaker, whose horse
and wagon happened to be standing by.

What occurred next was hideous and confusing. Even as two Negroes
who worked for the undertaker drove the wagon into the grove, someone
laid a sharp blade to the lynch rope, and Frank's body tumbled to the earth
with a thud. On impact, the throng rushed forward, Howell in the lead, until
the dead man appeared to vanish. Eventually, the Negroes reached him
with their wicker basket. "Bring the body on, men," shouted Morris. "Bring
it on. Quick, for God's sake." But there was no room to maneuver, so the
judge wedged his way into the pack, holding it at bay just long enough for
the pair to get a grip. The Negroes, however, managed only a couple of steps
before Howell reached out and struck at the basket, upending it and
spilling Frank's remains once again onto the hard red clay.

Later, people would shake their heads as they tried to fathom Howell's
rabidness. Just a mean cuss, they reckoned. Just low-down, no matter his high
birth. And that was part of it. Yet in the end, Robert E. Lee Howell— name-
sake of one great man, cousin of another— was driven as much from without
as from within. Marietta boy, Tom Watson supporter, somehow more— not
less— than his confreres, he was the quintessential native son. Georgia now
spoke through Howell as he raised a boot high above Frank's corpse.

"Again and again," wrote the Journal's Rogers Winter, "as a man grinds
the head of a snake under his heel, did the man drive his heel into the face
of Leo M. Frank, grinding the black hair into the dirt and dead black leaves
until the crowd, stricken silent and motionless, could hear the man's heel as
it made a crunching sound."

"Stop him, for God's sake, stop him!" Morris cried. Yet as the judge
understood, he alone possessed the necessary moral authority, and after
reaching Howell's side, he expended all of it, begging him to halt. Whether
Morris got through to the man no one knows, but he did distract him long
enough for the Negroes to recapture the body, stagger to the wagon and
pull away.

570 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

The rig barely made it to the National Cemetery that marks Marietta's
eastern city limits before it was overtaken by several automobiles— among
them John Wood's Model T, Judge Newt riding shotgun. With what looked
like half the throng from Frey's Gin in pursuit on foot, the prospect of fur-
ther mutilation seemed imminent, and at the first chance, Morris jumped
out of the car, climbed up on the seat of the undertaker's wagon and seized
the reins. At a wide spot in the road, Wood again pulled alongside, and in
one deft move, the judge leaped to the ground, jerked the basket containing
Frank's remains into his arms and placed it across the Model T's backseat.
"Now, John," Morris roared after climbing back in beside him, "drive like
hell to Atlanta." And with Rogers Winter— a heretofore unheralded city
hall reporter whose scintillating account of the morning's events would be
transmitted by the Associated Press to the four corners of the earth—
perched on the running board, that's what he did. Wrote Winter:

Opening wide his throttle, Attorney Wood poured into his motor every-
thing it would hold.

By his side, with drawn face and gleaming eyes, Judge Morris strained
forward, peering through the dust, waving his arms and shouting for auto-
mobiles to make way.

Crosswise of the tonneau, the end of it projecting a foot or more on
each side of the car, jostled and swayed the undertaker's long basket with
the dead body inside.

Down the road toward Atlanta sped the car, and up the road toward
Marietta sped automobiles loaded with men going like mad to see the
body.

The car with the body gave the cars with the sightseers just enough
room for the end of the basket to miss a collision, and the cars with the
sightseers gave equally as little room for the car with the dead man.

Low over the road hung an endless roll of dust, and through this dust
the three men in the death car would dimly see cars coming one after
another, a procession of them, all speeding like racers; and the death car
would swerve a little to the right to pass them, which made the basket jos-
tle and sway and rattle, while the sightseers flashing past would wave their
hands and shout hoarse shouts as they raced northward to Marietta to see
the body hanging in the grove.

At Smyrna, a crossroads community south of Marietta, Wood stopped
long enough for Winter to duck into a phone booth and call Atlanta's
Greenberg & Bond Funeral Home, which agreed to dispatch a motor hearse,
then the party resumed its journey down through the valleys of Cobb, across
the broad Chattahoochee and into town. At the corner of Marietta and

THE LYNCHING OF LEO FRANK 571

Ashby on the capital's northwestern outskirts, the mortuary's machine was
waiting. "In a mad haste," reported Winter, "the basket was shoved into the
undertaker's funeral car," and out of the executioners' hands. It was almost
noon.

And so Leo Frank was returned to Atlanta, but he would not rest in
peace— not yet. Though the undertakers made every effort to conceal the
body, word quickly leaked out, and within an hour, hundreds had found
their way to the hiding place— the funeral home garage. Amidst threats to
break down the doors, Police Captain L. S. Dobbs (who two years before as
a lowly sergeant had not only been among the men who answered Newt
Lee's call but had discovered the murder notes) ordered a squad of 40
mounted officers to escort the remains to the establishment's chapel, which
was two blocks distant. Shortly thereafter, the public was admitted.

For five hours this swelteringly hot August afternoon, Leo Frank's bat-
tered corpse, the cheeks crushed from the impact of Howell's boot heel, lay
on a makeshift bier in Greenburg & Bond's front hall. Though the sight
proved too ghastly for a few (several elderly ladies collapsed), most reacted
"without so much as a look of horror." Upon exiting the funeral home, peo-
ple lingered on the streets, talking excitedly and, as quickly as labs could
print them up, buying pictures taken at Frey's Gin before the body was cut
down. All the while, newsreel cameramen from Path6 and Mutual ground
away. By dusk, more than 15,000 men (among them Frank's initial nemesis,
Detective John Black), women and children had borne witness to the lynch-
ing brethren's work.

Meantime in Marietta, a fresh crowd had formed on the town square.
There, Fiddlin' John Carson— whose new ballad had attained enormous
popularity since its debut two months before— was sawing away on his
Stradivarius reproduction, his thin nasal voice carrying the doleful tune and
warning lyrics out over the sea of work-weary faces and into the red clay
hills beyond:

Little Mary Phagan
She went to town one day;
She went to the pencil factory
To get her weekly pay.

She left her home at eleven,
She kissed her mother goodbye;
Not one time did that poor girl think
She was going off to die.

572 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Leo Frank he met her
With a brutely heart and grin;
He says to little Mary,
"You'll never see home again."

I have an idea in my mind,
When Frank he comes to die,
And stands examination
In that courthouse in the sky.

He'll be so astonished
To what the angels say,
How he killed little Mary
Upon that holiday.

Judge Roan passed the sentence;
He passed it very well;
The Christian doers of heaven
Sent Leo Frank to hell.

Carson played the ballad again and again until finally folks tired of it, and
he broke into That Old Time Religion, which was good enough for them.

TWENTY-TWO

That Thursday morning, Pennsylvania Station teemed with lawmen.
Uniformed officers guarded the entrances. Plainclothes detectives
circulated throughout the lobby. But it was at the great steel-girdered
balcony overlooking the platforms where trains arrived and departed that
the New York police had concentrated their forces, sealing off the gate that
opened onto the stairs leading down to Track Six. Southern Railway's #36
from Atlanta, which was bringing Leo Frank's remains home for burial, was
due at 6:00, and the possibility that the body's arrival might occasion violent
demonstrations was all too real.

For the past two days, New York— and, for that matter, Chicago, San
Francisco and dozens of other northern and western cities large and small—
had witnessed an unbridled outpouring of grief and condemnation. "A
world at war will pause from its awful work long enough to shudder at this
deed of darkness," Rabbi Stephen S. Wise had predicted upon hearing of
Frank's death, and so it had.

First had come the lamentations, particularly from recent Jewish immi-
grants to New York, who'd imagined that they had left persecution behind in
the shtetls of the Ukraine and the ghettos of Warsaw. Reported the New
York Tribune: "Always emotional, the East Side received the news as though
a great hand were squeezing its heart dry." Doleful crowds gathered outside
the offices of Yiddish papers such as the Warheit and the Forward, while on
street corners solitary mourners wept. Across from Seward Park, noted one
reporter, "a bent old woman like the sculptured figure of sorrow" rocked to
and fro whispering: "Tot-tot! Leo is dead."

Soon enough, however, the dirges had given way to denunciations.
Terming the lynching "a stain upon our country," American Jewish Com-
mittee president Louis Marshall declared: "Georgia is now on trial in the
forum of civilization." Meantime, Macy's chairman, Nathan Straus, thun-
dered: "The lynching of Leo Frank is a disgrace." And it wasn't just Jews
who voiced such sentiments. Organizations ranging from the American Bar
Association to the Illinois Federation of Colored Women's Clubs passed
resolutions castigating Georgia, while individuals ranging from the presi-
dent of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (who viewed

574 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

the lynching as a "shameful" by-product of chivalry) to Booker T. Washing-
ton (who saw the crime as the inevitable fruit of a society that permitted the
"promiscuous lynching of black men and women") issued fierce rebukes.
So, too, did John Slaton, who, from San Francisco, where he was taking in
the Pan-Pacific Exhibition, decreed: "Every man who engaged in the lynch-
ing should be hanged, for he is an assassin." In the end, former president
William Howard Taft might well have been speaking for the country as a
whole when, stepping off a train in Salt Lake City to attend a convention, he
told reporters: "The lynching of Leo Frank was a damnable outrage. There
was no excuse, no mitigating circumstances to justify the action of the
Georgia mob. An action like that makes a decent man sick."

Amplifying and reinforcing the feeling abroad in the land, the nation's
press had also vehemently decried the lynching, its editorialists lambasting
Georgia— and Dixie— with the sort of vituperations usually sparked only
by a deadly act of foreign aggression. Pronounced the Akron Beacon-
Journal:

A more unspeakable outrage was never perpetrated than was this infa-
mous butchery. There are bad people in hell who would not only have
regretted it, but who would turn away from it in horror. The plain fact is
that Georgia has everlastingly placed a smirch of ineradicable barbarism
across its once fair escutcheon. Georgia is a good place for every decent
man and woman to stay away from.

Charged the San Francisco Bulletin:

Georgia is mad with her own virtue, cruel, unreasoning, blood-thirsty, bar-
barous. She is not civilized. She is not Christian. She is not sane.

Concluded the Chicago Tribune:

The South is barely half educated. Whatever there is explicable in the mur-
der of Leo M. Frank is thus explainable. The South is a region of illiteracy,
blatant self-righteousness, cruelty and violence. Until it is improved by the
infusion of better blood and better ideas it will remain a reproach and a
danger to the American Republic.

The New York World, meantime, expressed its disapproval with an editorial
cartoon depicting Georgia as a gun-toting harridan brandishing a torch that
burns with the words lynch law, while in the background a silhouetted
figure dangles from a tree. And as for the New York Times, it acidly pro-
claimed:

BURIAL 575

The State of Georgia should either apprehend the murderers of Leo M.
Frank and punish them according to its laws, or its people should honor
them by election to the chief judicial offices in their gift. Any half-way
course will be a cowardly evasion. Either the lynchers of Frank faithfully
represent public opinion in Georgia or they do not represent it. If Georgia
approves lynching, then honors bestowed upon the lynchers would attest
to the shameless courage of the Georgia public and its willingness to defy
public opinion in the other States of the Union.

All of which explains why when Southern's #36— running twenty min-
utes late— finally rumbled into Pennsylvania Station, the police let only a
few people onto the platform, among them a handful of newspapermen and
Negro porters and the family members who'd come to claim the dead:
Rudolph Frank and Otto and Marian Stern.

Practically the first person off the train was Lucille Frank, and while she
was thickly veiled, those awaiting her saw at once that she was in a state of
near collapse. Not that this was any wonder, for Lucille had not slept since
being awakened some 55 hours earlier with the news of Leo's abduction.
Once the worst had been confirmed, she'd immediately thrown herself into
the tasks attendant to an unexpected death. Tuesday morning had seen
her everywhere in Milledgeville, settling accounts with various merchants,
answering telegrams of condolence, arranging for Leo's belongings to be
collected from the prison farm and bidding goodbye to the Alfords. Only
after completing these jobs had she allowed her uncle Bud— who'd driven
down from Athens— to chauffeur her home, where more chores awaited.
Various well-meaning friends had already begun planning an Atlanta
funeral, but native Georgian though she was, Lucille was not about to let
her husband's remains be interred in a state that had brought him to such a
hideous end. Consequently, she had taken charge of the arrangements,
tending to details right up to midnight when unassisted and showing no
serious effects of her ordeal, she had boarded her train. Yet over the course
of the long trip north, Lucille's strength had ebbed, and when she spotted
Leo's father, sister and brother-in-law she at last broke down, sobbing: "It's
over. It's all over now."

Huddled there on the nearly empty platform, Lucille and her in-laws
momentarily appeared lost and alone. But within minutes, they were joined
by Rabbi David Marx, Alex Marcus, Henry Alexander and Herbert Haas,
all of whom had also come up from Atlanta. As hugs and handshakes were
exchanged, Rudolph Frank excused himself from this tight group and made
his way slowly down the length of the train to the express car. When an offi-
cer attempted to block his path, he pointed to a simple green pine box
wedged amid a jumble of baggage and in a voice still thick with his native

576 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Germany choked: "Let me— Let me— Can't you see— I'm that boy's
father." Thereupon the guard relaxed, and for the next few minutes the
grieving man stood by as his son's casket, the attached death certificate mis-
labeled "Leo Moses Frank," was loaded onto a cart and thence into an ele-
vator for transport to a waiting hearse.

Once the hearse's doors had been shut and the living had climbed into
taxicabs, a police motorcycle escort led the vehicles out of Pennsylvania
Station's Thirty-first Street exit and past several hundred onlookers who
stood respectfully behind barricades. Then, it was north onto Seventh Ave-
nue, east onto Thirty-second Street and finally south onto Fifth Avenue for
the ride downtown to the Manhattan Bridge and across the East River.
When the caravan reached Brooklyn, the taxis headed toward the Franks'
Underhill Avenue home, while the hearse, its outrider and a trailing car of
reporters proceeded to an Atlantic Avenue mortuary, where an undertaker
would spend the afternoon reconstructing the dead man's features, repair-
ing the damage done by Robert E. Lee Howell's boot heel.

Leo Frank was buried early Friday morning at Mount Carmel Cemetery in
the Cypress Hills section of Queens, his remains accompanied to the grave
by immediate kin and some 30 invited friends. Both the hour and the
limited number of mourners had been dictated by the family, who after
Thursday had seen enough of crowds. No sooner had the cabs transporting
Lucille and the others from Pennsylvania Station pulled up at 152 Under-
hill than the crush had started. Eventually, somewhere between 5,000 and
10,000 curious souls— among them old Jews from the neighborhood, moth-
ers pushing baby carriages, newsboys hawking extras, kids on a lark, a per-
ambulating hurdy-gurdy man, even an unidentified Negro intellectual who
coolly told the press he'd come for no other reason than to see how whites
endured a circumstance usually reserved for members of his race— had
made their way to the three-story graystone between Sterling and Prospect
Places. Though a squad of officers from the Grand Avenue Precinct had
enforced order, the bereaved had virtually been held captive in their own
house all day. Not until 11 p.m., when the throng began to dwindle, had the
undertaker been able to bring Frank's body home, the pall bearers carrying
the shiny black coffin that had supplanted the pine box from Georgia into
the parlor amid the chalky explosions of the newspaper photographers'
flashes.

Daybreak had found still more New Yorkers congregating outside 152
Underhill— as of 8:30, the number totaled 800. Consequently, Rabbi Marx
had conducted the funeral as soon as possible. The ceremony, though
wrenchingly emotional (Rae Frank several times called out for her boy),

BURIAL 577

was mercifully brief, and once the tearful in-laws had filed by the open cas-
ket for a last look into the face that had been brother, son, husband, they had
climbed into limousines and departed for the graveyard. At Mount Carmel,
both Marx and Dr. Alexander Lyons— the rabbi at Brooklyn's Eighth
Avenue Temple, Leo's childhood synagogue— read prayers, after which, as
Lucille softly sobbed and Marian Stern stared away in glassy silence, the
casket was lowered and Marx and Rudolph Frank recited the Kaddish.
When the final words had been intoned, the survivors turned from their
loved one's lily-and-aster-heaped resting place and walked to their cars.

Thus was the body of Leo Frank committed to the earth, yet for those who
had endlessly championed his innocence, there would be no surcease. Even
as the gravediggers were at work, back across the East River in Manhattan,
an agitated throng had been assembling. The setting was Cooper Union,
which had long been booked on this date for a conference to address the
persecution of European Jewry and hence provided the perfect forum to
explore instead avenues of redress against the persecutors of one specific
American Jew.

Though the New York police were once again out in force, they were
unprepared for either the crowd's size— an estimated 20,000— or its emo-
tional intensity. Crying Jews surged into the historic old meeting hall,
quickly filling it to capacity and, after the doors were closed, breaking in the
lobby windows. The overflow spilled onto Third Avenue for two blocks in
each direction, and not until the event's organizers agreed to send out rep-
resentatives to speak to the masses left standing on the sidewalks did the
threat of riot subside.

The various ideas bandied about inside Cooper Union, coming as they
did between frenzied expressions of sorrow and animosity, were initially
hard to categorize, but over the course of several hours, two opposing
schools of thought emerged. The first held that the responsibility for meting
out justice to Frank's lynchers fell entirely to the state of Georgia. This was
the view of the event's chairman, Nathan Straus, as well as that of J. S.
Bache's William J. Wollman (the Wall Street broker who had backed the
commutation fight), the American Jewish Committee and the editorial
pages of the cause's leading New York propagandists— the Times, the
World and the Journal. While these individuals and institutions vigorously
advocated the arrest and punishment of the guilty parties ("The State of
Georgia must prosecute all the murderers," roared Straus), they believed
they should not participate directly in the effort lest they provoke resent-
ment among the very authorities they hoped to spur to action.

The infuriated multitudes had not, however, come to Cooper Union to

578 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

hear talk of restraint. They had come to receive their marching orders, and
in this, they were not disappointed, for most of those who spoke felt that
only by bringing outside pressure forcibly to bear could they induce Geor-
gia officials to mount a thorough investigation. Among the orators articu-
lating such a position were the financier N. Taylor Phillips and New York
City's education commissioner, Joseph Barondess. During a lengthy fulmi-
nation frequently interrupted by cheers and applause, Phillips asserted:

Our people do not live in this country because of the favor of any man. We
have shed our blood for this nation. Fellow Jews, you will never get justice,
you will never receive your lawful due, unless you fight for it soul and body,
day by day.

Barondess, meanwhile, brought the faithful to their feet by invoking the
name of the era's exalted Jewish martyr— Captain Alfred Dreyfus. In
France, a nation "not as far advanced as ours," he boomed, Dreyfus had ulti-
mately been exonerated of spying accusations and restored to his military
rank. Why was it, Barondess then asked, that in the United States, puta-
tively the land of religious freedom, Leo Frank had met so far worse a fate?
The answer could not have been more unsettling— or more galvanizing:

The Jews of America are not organized. They are weaklings. Come, rise.

With that, the crowd stood and in the Hebrew tongue of its fathers prayed
for strength.

The Cooper Union convocation was just the first of several such assem-
blages—among them one at Boston's Faneuil Hall that drew a crowd of
eight thousand and sparked rhetoric "equalled in radicalism only in the days
before the Civil War." Taken together, these rallies signaled that Northern-
ers in general and Jews in particular intended to do what they could to
apprehend Leo Frank's killers. And while there was no overarching plan, no
coordinated effort, action commenced along several fronts. In New York, in
Chicago and even in Hoboken, New Jersey, newspaper editors and busi-
nessmen inaugurated reward funds, the richest of which earmarked $20,000
for any member of the lynch mob who turned state's evidence. Meantime, in
the Midwest and New England, boycotts were organized. Urged the Boston
Traveler:

To the degree that a humane public can rebuke the State of Georgia by
refusing to have any part of her unholy people's products, they will do
so. Anything made or grown in Georgia will bear a sinister brand and be

BURIAL 579

suggestive of lynchings, and it ought to be, and doubtless will be, left
untouched.

In response to such calls (the Milwaukee Free-Press proposed complete
"commercial, social, and political ostracism"), at least a scattering of mer-
chants stopped stocking Coca-Cola, and the president of Chicago's Police
Patrolman's Association announced that his officers would no longer honor
prisoner extradition requests from Atlanta as "Georgia was not capable of
self government." New York congressman Isaac Siegel, reacting to a wide-
spread demand that the federal government prosecute the man many held
liable for Frank's murder, offered legislation to ban Tom Watson's Jeffer-
sonian from the mails.

Finally, however, there were those who, while welcoming the bounties and
sanctions, endorsed a more aggressive approach, proposing what amounted
to a guerrilla mission behind enemy lines. Toward that end, two New York-
based groups— one headed by the Brooklyn suffragette Bella Newman-
Zilberman, the other chaired by Judge Edward Swann of Manhattan's Spe-
cial Sessions Court and Harry Schlacht, president of the East Side Protective
Association— had raised sufficient funding to hire a number of private
detectives, and within days the city's papers were reporting that these
"young men had left New York for Marietta to hunt down the twenty-five
members of the lynching party."

For all the morbidly orgiastic convulsions that rocked Georgia in the imme-
diate wake of the lynching, by the time Leo Frank's body was laid to rest,
a tensely watchful hush had descended on the state— most especially on
Marietta. "I've been asked if I found Marietta quiet after the lynching,"
wrote the New York Tribune's John J. Leary, once again the first national
reporter on the scene. "I did. It was as quiet as a dynamite factory; so quiet
that it seemed as though a healthy sneeze would start an explosion." Upon
arriving in town, Leary momentarily feared that he himself might constitute
that sneeze. No sooner had he parked than another car pulled in behind his,
blocking him in, and a couple hundred men who only seconds before had
been whiling away the hours on the courthouse lawn gathered round. Yet
after Leary stated his business, the sea parted and he walked unmolested
across the square to the offices of the Marietta Journal, whose editor, Josiah
Carter, Jr., was expecting him. As for the idlers, they returned to their idling,
or the appearance thereof, just as Marietta reassumed the mantle of tran-
quillity. Which, of course, was exactly as the lynching brethren desired it. A
placid surface had to be maintained, but so, too, did a coiled sense of men-

580 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

ace. As the New York Times'* Charles Willis Thompson, who fetched up in
Cobb County shortly after Leary, described it:

Marietta today is in a mood of braced purpose and resolve. Every stranger
who comes into town is under observation the moment he arrives. The sur-
veillance is not obtrusive, but it is unmistakable. [The town's] mood is one
of determination to protect the men who, in its eyes, executed the law after
it had been trampled on. It is resolved that not a hair on their heads shall
be harmed.

The process whereby Marietta— primarily in the persons of the individu-
als who'd orchestrated events thus far— would endeavor to conceal the
identities of the lynch party members and, by so doing, attempt to frustrate
any effort to get to the bottom of the crime itself, had actually begun even
as Fiddlin' John Carson was serenading the masses the day of the hanging.

The first order of business had been to get the men who'd made the trip
to Milledgeville to some safe haven where they could unwind. Though all of
the vigilantes believed in the righteousness of what they had done, the
undertaking had exacted a toll— both physically and emotionally. Seventy-
five years later, Lawrence Haney's oldest daughter, Golmer, who was 5 that
summer, would vividly recollect her father's homecoming from Frey's Gin.
"I remember waking up early in the morning, and he was crying and my
mother was crying," she recalled, adding: "I'm sure my dad felt bad about it.
He was a human being." What was done, though, was done, and eventually,
Haney had silently trudged into the fields behind his place, where he'd
thrown himself into the numbing work of pulling corn. Elsewhere around
Cobb County, similar scenes had played out. Hence that same afternoon,
the 25— along with a couple of the mission's masterminds— were again
on the move. Their destination: a rustic fish camp owned by the party's
coleader George Daniell on the Etowah River in the hills north of town.
There, the participants could not only collect themselves but compare
notes.

Meantime back in Marietta, several of the lynching brethren had set up
what amounted to a press office. Its purpose: to discourage the numerous
Atlanta newspapermen who'd descended on the town from asking too many
questions while simultaneously planting misleading information with these
same gentlemen. That the effort was successful, there can be no doubt, as the
following morning, Atlantans— and, for that matter, New Yorkers, Bostoni-
ans and residents of every other city whose papers picked up the resulting
stories— awakened to a surfeit of threats, taunts and fabrications. "The pub-
lic will never know the identities of the 25 brave and loyal men who took
into their own hands the execution of a law that had been stripped from

BURIAL 58l

them by Governor Slaton," one of the mouthpieces told the Constitution. "I
would not advise inquisitive authorities or persons to try to reveal them."
That said, this same spokesman, in a remark clearly intended for the amuse-
ment of his fellow conspirators, teased would-be investigators with a cryptic
clue, declaring that the lynch party's leader bore "as reputable a name as you
would ever hear in a lawful community." While those on the outside could
only puzzle at this statement, for those on the inside, it was easily and comi-
cally transparent. The leader plainly referred to, Black Newt Morris, bore a
reputable and lawful name indeed— that of his cousin Judge Newt.

From the outset, then, the Cobb Countians delegated to hold the world
at bay had gone about the task with characteristic impudence. At times, in
fact, they had indulged in outright ridicule. In a telegram to Detective
William J. Burns, Marietta's police chief jeered: "Leo Frank lynched here.
Come quick and help investigate." Such cracks notwithstanding, the pre-
vailing attitude was one of care and caution. When the Atlanta Journal, in
its first edition the day of the lynching, reported that on the previous night,
Marietta lawmen had been unable to account for the whereabouts of a
number of cars, Mayor E. P. Dobbs— who, not incidentally, owned one of
the machines in question— had gone right to work composing a bold refu-
tation. Thus beneath the headline, marietta officials didn't know of
mob, the Journal's late editions carried the following item:

I desire in the interest of justice and truth to say that the Marietta and
county officials had no knowledge of any automobiles leaving Marietta
last night nor were they apprised of the return of any machines today.

None of the officials had any intimation of such an undertaking until the
body was found about two miles from the city this morning.

E. P. DOBBS, MAYOR.

Yet for all their early successes, the lynching brethren understood that it
would take more than a few disingenuous comments to the press to cover
up a crime of this magnitude. Not only did they face threats from without,
but they faced them from within, for the overwhelming reaction of Dixie's
elites had been, if anything, more censorious than that of their Northern
counterparts. Georgia's shame! the headline atop the Constitution's initial
postlynching editorial had cried, beneath which the organ of the New
South, after calling for the punishment of the slayers, sadly observed:

For the first time, perhaps, since the murder of Mary Phagan, those con-
vinced of the innocence of Leo Frank as well as those who believe in his
guilt share a common view: That Georgia herself has been tied by the neck
and dragged through the mud.

582 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Not surprisingly, the Journal had gone even further, bitterly proclaiming:

If this lynching, which by the way, is the ninth that has occurred in Geor-
gia within the last eight months, is condoned by reasonable authorities,
who can say how frequent and swift will be the lynchings to follow? Let us
face the stark and terrible issue now, or resign our State to the unbridled
instincts of the jungle.

As the chief custodian of the State's honor and law, it is the Governor's
solemn duty to probe this crime to its blackest bottom and to exhaust
every resource at his command to see that the guilty are punished and the
State's integrity vindicated. If Governor Harris does nothing else during
his entire administration but does this in just completion, he will have ren-
dered his State immortal service and will go into history among the bravest
and great men of his time.

It is a straight-out issue between law and anarchy. Let Georgians choose
for themselves.

And it wasn't just Atlanta's newspapers that had condemned the crime. The
Macon Telegraph, the Savannah Press, the Columbus Enquirer— all had
raised their voices in protest, as had such influential regional organs as the
Louisville Courier-Journal, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Jackson
Clarion-Ledger. The editors of these sheets had demanded action, and if the
word of Georgia's governor was to be believed, action they would get.
Speaking from the South Georgia town of Fitzgerald, where on the morn-
ing of the lynching he had been attending a reunion of Confederate veter-
ans, Nat Harris declared:

I am greatly shocked and aggrieved, and I do not believe that the peo-
ple of Georgia will at all approve of this action. I am sure that it will hurt
Georgia greatly everywhere, and I am extremely sorry that it occurred.

It can be taken for granted that I will use my every power to see to it
that the members of this mob receive fitting punishment for their crime. I
will see to it that the authorities of the county in which the crime occurred
receive every help at the disposal of the state.

With that, the governor had boarded a train back to Atlanta, where he
promised to take personal charge of the investigation.

Nat Harris's vow to pursue Leo Frank's executioners signaled the begin-
ning of the official probe into the lynching, a probe that in short order was
backed up by a $1,500 state reward and endorsed by the Georgian and the

BURIAL 583

Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Yet from the start, most observers could
do little but shake their heads at the inquiry's prospects. In the same dis-
patch that contained his description of Marietta's determination to repel all
comers, the New York Times's Charles Willis Thompson reported:

Nobody talks seriously of the investigation Governor Harris is promis-
ing, and there are very few who believe there is the slightest chance of any
of the murderers being put to any grave trouble, much less punished. They
are known to many of the citizens of Marietta, who would die rather than
reveal their knowledge or even their suspicion.

Closer to home, the Macon Telegraph advanced the same conclusion:

There are of course to be investigations— the usual thing presumably. It
is said every effort will be made to apprehend these men. Doubtless they
can be apprehended— doubtful they will.

Several factors contributed to the general skepticism that greeted Har-
ris's pledge. For one, in the wake of the governor's return to Atlanta, the
Journal reported that despite having been awakened in the wee hours of
Tbesday morning with the news of Leo Frank's abduction, he had refused to
call off his scheduled trip to the Confederate veterans' reunion in Fitzger-
ald, boarding a train that departed Terminal Station at 7 a.m. —the approx-
imate time of Frank's death. Few disclosures could have spoken more
powerfully: Regardless of statements to the contrary, Harris wanted to put
as much distance between himself and this awful mess as possible. That such
was the case was hardly a surprise, as the governor could not but have real-
ized that if he looked too deeply into the crime, he would come face-to-face
with information he did not want to know or already knew and wanted to
forget. Though no names had been divulged, the fact that the lynch party
and its organizers had included Georgians of the first rank was immediately
and everywhere a foregone conclusion. Observed the Times's Thompson:

The word mob does not seem descriptive, for these men did not display
the ordinary characteristics of a mob. Lynching mobs are usually com-
posed of riff-raff, but this one consisted of leading citizens in the commu-
nity, men prominent in business and social circles.

Yet even had Harris been inclined to take on the lynching brethren, the
popular support that would have been necessary for him to proceed simply
did not exist. While Georgia's principal newspapers and the standard-
bearers of Southern capital and industry were clamoring for him to act,

584 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

they did not speak for the poor dirt farmer or factory girl. As Atlanta mayor
Jimmy Woodward— who, like John Slaton, was in San Francisco attending
the Pan-Pacific Exposition but, unlike the former governor, supported the
lynching brethren's doings— put it in an inflammatory after-dinner address
to the California State Assessors' Association: "Seventy-five percent of the
people of Georgia are convinced that the man lynched Monday [sic] night
committed the deed, and they are on the ground and ought to know." To
that 75 percent, of course, Tom Watson was the final authority, and while the
crime had occurred just before the Jeff er soman's weekly deadline, he had
nonetheless managed to get a boxed item that spoke directly to his con-
stituency onto the front page:

In putting the sodomite murderer to death, the Vigilance Committee
has done what the Sheriff would have done, if Slaton had not been of the
same mould as Benedict Arnold. Let Jew libertines take notice. Georgia is
not for sale to rich criminals.

Little wonder that the Macon News, which had denounced the lynching,
was ultimately moved to advise:

The less said about the matter from now on the better. Frank no longer
lives; those who wanted vengeance at least should be satisfied, and it will
be better for everybody concerned to let the Frank case rest forever.

An inquiry had been promised, however, and an inquiry there would be.
In fact, there would be several, the first of which convened in Nat Harris's
Atlanta office the Thursday after the lynching. Though presided over by the
governor, this session would be conducted by the men who according to
Georgia law were charged with probing crimes that occurred on prison
farm property —the prison commissioners Robert Davison, Eugene Rainey
and Thomas Patterson.

From the viewpoint of the many anguished souls in and out of Georgia
who, while incredulous that Leo Frank had been carried away without the
necessity of breaking a lock or firing a shot, were ignorant of the Prison
Commission's complicity in the crime, this opening round in the investiga-
tive process offered reason for hope. In the days since the lynching, some
genuinely significant evidence had emerged from Milledgeville. The Geor-
gian's William Flythe had been the initial reporter to reach the prison farm,
and he'd developed the intelligence that the person who cut the phone lines
into town prior to the abduction was a redheaded, motorcycle-riding electri-
cian—a description fitting that of the man who'd done the job, Yellow Jacket
Brown. Hard upon this newsbreak, the Hearst paper's competitors had also

BURIAL 585

scored coups, the Journal reporting that the handcuffs that had been used on
Superintendent J. M. Burke— now in the prison commission's possession—
bore factory serial numbers through which their purchasers could well
be traced, the Constitution reporting that before speeding into the night
with their captive, someone in the vigilance committee had thoughtfully
returned Warden J. E. Smith's valuable pump-action shotgun to his office.
And these were just the items that had made it into print. Because the 25
had conducted themselves so openly during the raid, many penitentiary
employees and inmates were in a position to provide promising leads.
Indeed, within hours of the crime, the trusty F. J. Tbrner had posted a letter
to Lucille Frank naming Cobb County deputy sheriff William McKinney as
one of the party members.

The clues and witnesses necessary for the Prison Commission to have
pursued a close examination into what had transpired in Milledgeville were,
in short, available. Yet any expectations that the body actually was going to
pursue such an examination evaporated shortly after the inquiry began
when Governor Harris announced that due to the sensitive nature of the
matters under consideration, the proceedings would be conducted behind
closed doors. From the outset, the commissioners— like the governor— had
wanted nothing more than to make the incident go away. As a matter of
fact, no sooner had news of Frank's death hit the papers than Rainey and
Davison had publicly absolved prison personnel of any culpability in the
crime. Proclaimed Rainey: "I do not see how the prison officials at Milledge-
ville could have done anything Monday night to save Frank." (In response,
a grateful Warden Smith had told the Journal: "I am very glad the prison
commissioners were here when the attack occurred.") Yet even taking these
sorts of unmistakable signals into account, the brazenness with which the
three-man authority now behaved was breathtaking. After meeting for no
more than an hour, the commissioners simply departed, leaving Harris to
announce the investigation's outcome to the press. Based on what Davison
and the others had just told him, the governor asserted, the guards in Mill-
edgeville never had a chance. To have put up a fight would have been "suici-
dal." There had been only one choice— to capitulate to the mob. That said,
Harris, in a statement that flatly contradicted the boasts of two months ear-
lier regarding the prison farm's impregnability, declared:

The building at the State Prison Farm is not a penitentiary in any sense
of the word. It is designed primarily as a place to detain prisoners. There
are very little, if any, facilities for resisting an attack from the outside.

Though he went on to reassure the reporters that he would do all in his
power to bring the guilty to justice, the governor made it clear that not only

586 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

would he not divulge any evidence he had discussed with the commission-
ers but that the body's work was done. The primary responsibility for delv-
ing into the lynching would fall to the chief prosecuting officer of the
jurisdiction in which it had taken place.

The Saturday following the lynching, Herbert Clay strode into the same
office where just two days earlier the prison commissioners had washed
their hands of the affair. In the honeyed tones of a natural-born charmer, he
assured Nat Harris that he would "exert every effort" within his power as
solicitor general of the Blue Ridge Circuit to "detect the members of the
mob that lynched Leo M. Frank." Though the Atlanta papers contented
themselves with merely reporting this development, the deeper implica-
tions did not go entirely unnoted. Scoffed one North Georgia weekly:

Herbert Clay announced that he intends to ferret the mystery to the bot-
tom. Can you imagine what a terrible sifting of sand there will be when
Herbert gets to the bottom.

But even had no one spoken, there can be little chance that any Georgian
who'd witnessed the events of the past months would have mistaken Clay's
appearance on the stage for other than what it was. After all, he had led the
Marietta delegations that argued against the commutation of Frank's death
sentence before both the Prison Commission and Governor Slaton. Yet
here he was vowing to pursue the parties who'd accomplished the thing
he'd so volubly advocated, the thing he'd surreptitiously helped to bring
about. The idea was absurd on its face, intimating that the proceedings to
come— the coroner's inquest and the grand jury hearing— would constitute
the cruelest sorts of judicial farces, the final articulations of the lynching
brethren's contempt for those who'd been aligned with Frank.

Unlike most farces, the ones Herbert Clay would orchestrate were
meant to serve a dual purpose. True, if everything went as planned, they
would mock justice, but more important, they would simultaneously immu-
nize the members of the vigilance committee against justice. Consequently,
there could be no breaking of ranks, no slips.

At first blush, the coroner's inquest would hardly seem to have de-
manded Herbert Clay's attention. Cobb County coroner John Booth was a
member of the original Ku Klux Klan, inducted into the fraternity during
Reconstruction by the original grand wizard, Confederate general Nathan
Bedford Forrest. For the 75-year-old Booth, the Frank lynching recalled the
sort of work he and his hooded comrades had pursued half a century
before. As he told the Associated Press, he admired the vigilance commit-

BURIAL 587

tee's "precision and secrecy." Small surprise, then, that few placed much
stock in his vow to probe the crime vigorously. Predicted the Constitution:
"The inquest verdict will surely be death at the hands of unknown parties."

Still, the lynching brethren could not be too careful, and when exactly
one week after Frank was found hanging at Frey's Gin Coroner Booth con-
vened his hearing, he quickly ceded the Cobb County Courthouse floor to
the lawyer whom Herbert Clay had picked to question witnesses— state
representative John Tucker Dorsey. Standing at Dorsey's side was another
member of the Marietta bar, this one selected by the Cobb County Com-
mission—Gordon Gann. The inquest would be conducted by one of the
crime's architects, assisted by one of the lynch party's commanders. And as
for the coroner's jury itself, it included mob member Coon Shaw and was
chaired by Dr. W. H. Perkinson, a close friend of Judge Newt Morris.

The impresarios who produced and directed this spectacle knew how to
put on a show. To the amused satisfaction of several hundred shirtsleeved
or overalled spectators gathered inside the courthouse and the uncompre-
hending dismay of thousands beyond Georgia's borders following through
the newspapers, the players acted out their parts with conviction and flair.
So well scripted were the vignettes that at one point, Dorsey confidently
waltzed witness Gus Benson— the merchant who'd seen the lynch party
turn into Frey's Gin— right up to the edge of a revelation:

"You say you saw at least one of the men step from one of the automo-
biles that had turned off the main road at the Frey gin?"
Benson moved a little nervously in his chair.
"Yes sir," he replied.

The acting prosecutor paused, and then shot out:
"Who was he?"
"I do not know."
There was an audible relaxation in all parts of the courtroom.

For the most part, however, the questioning progressed less dramatically.
Asked if he'd discovered Frank's body, former sheriff William Frey testified
that he reckoned he had. Asked if he'd instructed the Marietta police to
investigate the crime, Mayor E. P. Dobbs said of course. Shortly before
noon, after quizzing a dozen witnesses, Dorsey and Gann turned the case
over to the jurors, who, as expected, found only that Frank "came to his
death by being hanged by the neck." As to who might have done such a
thing, they were at a loss. Not that Dr. Perkinson and the others gave the
matter much thought. They returned their verdict following three minutes
of deliberation.

Before Herbert Clay could ring up the curtain on the investigation's last

588 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

act, he had to deal with a potential problem— the grand jury foreman,
James T. Anderson. In the words of the veteran Marietta Journal associate
editor Bill Kinney, Anderson was "soft on lynching." Over 70 years later,
James T. Anderson, Jr.— who was 12 in 1915— would remember his father
walking out of a Fiddlin' John Carson concert in Marietta that long-ago
August after the musician, who'd continued to capitalize on Frank's death,
struck up his signature ballad. The elder Anderson, respected member of
the community though he was, disapproved of what the community had
sanctioned and wanted no part of it.

The behind-the-scenes manipulations that ensued during the days lead-
ing up to the grand jury hearing can only be surmised, but their results,
scrawled across a document submitted to the Cobb County clerk of court,
remain on file for all to see. Herbert Clay removed Anderson as the jury
foreman, replacing him with the Marietta banker who'd helped to fund
the mission to Milledgeville— Robert A. Hill. The solicitor also got rid of
one more juror, replacing him with another fellow conspirator— Bolan
Glover Brumby.

One of the very few Mariettans who might have done the lynching breth-
ern legal harm was thus shunted aside. Yet even at this juncture, the men
masterminding events were not about to let down their guard. On the
morning of September 1, H. L. "Snax" Patterson— who several months ear-
lier had succeeded Newt Morris to the judgeship of the Blue Ridge Circuit
Court— took his place behind the bench in the Cobb County Courthouse
and, looking down on the grand jurors, issued a remarkable charge:

It has been published broadcast over the world that a lynching has
recently occurred in Cobb County. It is your duty to make a thorough and
complete investigation of that, as it is of all crimes when brought to your
attention. Your oaths bind you to honestly, fairly, and impartially make an
investigation of it, but it is not your duty to assume the role of secret serv-
ice men, the role of detectives. You were not selected in the capacity of pri-
vate detectives but as grand jurors of your county, and your work is that of
grand jurors and not the work of secret service men.

Now, gentlemen, you will retire and enter upon the discharge of your
duties.

Thereby relieved of the responsibility to do anything more than a cursory
job, the jurors took up the case.

Over the course of two days, Herbert Clay, assisted by John Tlicker
Dorsey, presented 35 witnesses— among them the three prison commis-
sioners and the omnipresent Mayor Dobbs— to the grand jury. The testi-
mony, of course, was privileged, not that the outcome was ever in question.

BURIAL 589

As the retired superior court judge Luther Hames, who during the 1930s
was John Dorsey's law partner, subsequently revealed: "Seven members of
the lynch party were on the Grand Jury." Accordingly, Clay emerged from
the courthouse the afternoon of September 2 carrying presentments that
over the signatures of Hill and Brumby concluded:

We have been unable to connect anybody with the perpetration of this
offense or to identify anyone who was connected with it, although we have
investigated the information furnished us by officers and other parties. To
this end we have subpoenaed and examined witnesses in an effort to dis-
close the perpetrators of this crime, but none of these witnesses could iden-
tify any of the parties. We have done our best to do our duty and ferret out
this crime, and regret to report that we find it impossible to indict anyone.

Considering the tumultous hue and cry generated by the news of Leo
Frank's lynching, the silence that greeted word of the Cobb County grand
jury's decision was staggering. Yes, a few northern papers expressed shock.
Roared the Boston Post:

The Cobb county grand jury reported Thursday that it had been unable
to find enough evidence to indict anyone for the lynching of Leo M. Frank.
Is Georgia in America?

But by and large, the press, particularly the Atlanta press, said nothing. Nei-
ther the Journal, the Constitution nor the Georgian ventured even a com-
ment on the perfunctory finale to the affair that had captivated the city for
two and a half years. "The newspapers unite in asserting that publicity ought
not now to be followed up," Luther Rosser noted in an early-September let-
ter to his still-vacationing partner, John Slaton. Local editors told Rosser
that "the public mind [was] so inflamed that publicity [would] amount to
nothing except to further ferment the present disorder." This was undoubt-
edly true. Yet in the end, various forms of self-interest played a greater role
in dictating the hands-off policy. At the Journal, any urge to pursue the story
or criticize the grand jury would have to have been weighed against the fact
that publisher James R. Gray's daughter was married to the first cousin of a
Mariettan who'd helped to plan the crime— Bolan Brumby. At the Constitu-
tion, nothing could be written because publisher Clark Howell's first cousin
was the Mariettan who'd danced a jig on Frank's face— Robert E. Lee
Howell. (So sensitive were Atlanta publications to Howell's part in things
that his name did not appear in any of their accounts.) At the Georgian, fur-
ther coverage was checked by a substance thicker than blood— money. Due
to the sheet's lobbying for the commutation of Frank's death sentence, it

590 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

had lost a substantial number of readers and suffered a corresponding
decline in advertising revenue. As the former Hearst reporter Herbert
Asbury would later observe in the American Mercury: "Thousands who had
been our friends turned on us. Everywhere we heard mutterings about 'the
damned Georgian.' " Consequently, the paper simply dropped the matter,
resuming instead the crusade against child labor it had been waging that
long-ago April weekend when Mary Phagan was found dead in the base-
ment of the National Pencil factory.

The muteness of Atlanta's newspapers, however, was not nearly as aston-
ishing as the muteness of the newspaper that was almost solely responsible
for transforming the Frank affair into a nationwide cause c61ebre— the New
York Times.

Initially, Adolph Ochs, though outraged at the crime, had attempted to
see it in a philosophical light. As he'd entered the conference chamber of
his paper's Forty-third Street tower for the staffs first editorial meetings
after the lynching, he had carried himself, in Garet Garrett's observation,
with "an air of reconcilement." While the publisher had never stopped
believing in Frank's innocence, he had also never warmed to him as a
human being. Noted Garrett in his diary: "I'm sure at last it was a relief to
Mr. O. to have him lynched and out of the way ... I have felt for some time
that he secretly despised Frank." Thus it was that during these early sessions
with his top men— among them the editorial page editor, Charles R. Miller,
and the acting managing editor, Frederick Birchall— Ochs had encouraged
a dispassionate debate. "We discussed . . . whether the Jews were interested
in Frank as a Jew or as an innocent," Garrett recalled. That topic led to an
exchange regarding Frank's possible guilt, a subject that prompted consid-
eration of the sexual aspects of the Phagan murder and as it happened
introduced the issue of "whether or not Jews are more libidinous than other
people." This matter, Garrett wrote, was touched upon only lightly but was
"remarkable for having been mentioned at all."

Yet soon enough, Ochs's detachment gave way to anxiety, and he was
questioning everything he'd thought and done since becoming involved in
the Frank case. This period of introspection was occasioned by two extraor-
dinary pieces of writing, the first of which was by Charles Thompson, in
Garrett's estimation the only Times reporter to have written "honestly
about the sentiment of Georgia and not what the Times was supposed to
want . . . Mr. O. didn't like it, of course, and yet he knew it was true, and had
to be printed. There was no help for it."

Published beneath the headline frank lynching due to suspicion
and prejudice, Thompson's lengthy analysis adduced three primary rea-
sons for what had taken place in Marietta on August 17:

BURIAL 591

First— The belief that the Jews of the country, hitherto not the object of
any hostility or dislike, had banded themselves together to save a criminal
because he belonged to their race and religion and thus ranged themselves
in opposition to men of other races and religions. Against this belief no
argument was effective, no denial was listened to.

Second— The bitter resentment over what everybody in Georgia to
whom this correspondent has talked calls "outside interference": and
this does not mean only the "interference" of the New York newspapers
by a long shot, though Tom Watson has done his level best to make it ap-
pear that the New York newspapers are attempting to govern the State of
Georgia.

Third— And this is the thing which turned the smoldering fire into a
raging flame and maddened men who were merely angry— it is believed
from one end of the State to the other that Governor Slaton was Frank's
lawyer and pardoned his client after every court had upheld that client's
conviction. The ignorant believe Slaton was bribed, or that at best he
received as Frank's lawyer a share of the fee paid to his firm; the more
intelligent believe that he was merely influenced in his judgement by the
fact that Frank was his firm's client.

Thompson's reporting deeply troubled Ochs. Heretofore, the publisher
had regarded his role in the Frank affair as that of a crusader, never really
considering how it all might have appeared from a Georgian's perspective.
More significant, Ochs had not previously paid much attention to the rum-
blings from within that the Times, by continually highlighting news tending
to exonerate Frank and persistently editorializing on his behalf, had over-
stepped its bounds. It was on this point that the publisher felt most vulnera-
ble, and it was to this point that the other piece of writing that would so
unnerve him was explicitly addressed.

In the lynching's immediate aftermath, Ochs had ordered his staff to dis-
tribute the Times's initial editorial denouncing the crime to all of Georgia's
daily papers. The hope had been that the sheets would reprint the scorching
broadside, but there had been no takers. In fact, W. T. Anderson, editor of
the antilynching Macon Telegraph, had been so alarmed by the publisher's
thinking that he had immediately wired him back. In his diary, Garrett par-
aphrases the wire's contents:

The message . . . said that for the sake of the Times and Mr. O., it [the
Telegraph] would not print the editorial as requested to do, and for the
sake of the decent people of Georgia and especially for the sake of the
Jews in Georgia would Mr. O. not stop this offensive propaganda. It was

59 2 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

the outside interference of the Jews, led by the Times, that had made it nec-
essary to lynch Frank. The Jews in fact were responsible for what had hap-
pened to him.

The next morning, the Telegraph would give prominent play to an eloquent
restatement of these sentiments:

As it now stands [in Georgia], Israel itself stands indicted and is the
object of a great deal of indignant anger, but the individual Israelite is
liked and respected.

Against the race generally there is, however, a sentiment of anger, a
proneness to denunciation, which is just at the present in quiescent status
quo.

If among the outside newspapers generally there is any attempt at sus-
tained denunciation of this state, Thomas E. Watson will, with a quick
eagerness, accept what he will consider a gage of battle thrown at his feet,
and he will answer in kind— more than in kind.

Watson will be answered in kind, and so it will go on until the time will
come when he will tell the people of the State of Georgia that the rich Jews
of the nation have bought up the press of the Republic to vilify and black-
guard and defame the State of Georgia in revenge for the killing of Leo M.
Frank. And when that charge is brought it will be passionately and plausi-
bly presented— and Georgia generally will believe it.

What will follow such a charge? Anti-Semitic demonstrations? Cer-
tainly. Anti-Semitic riots? Probably. Actual violence to Jewish citizens?
Possibly.

The men responsible are the Strauses, the Ochses, the Pulitzers and
other leading Jews of New York and the East generally. These men now
hold the comfort, safety, peace and happiness of the Jews of Georgia in the
hollow of their hands.

Following so quickly upon Thompson's dispatch, the Macon paper's reac-
tion had shaken Ochs to his core, awakening in him not just the realization
that he might share some of the blame for Frank's fate but the fear that by
aligning himself so thoroughly with the poor man he had endangered the
Times itself, coming perilously close to identifying the sheet in the public
mind as the one thing he'd never wanted it to be— "a Jewish newspaper."
Consequently, when the publisher had appeared at a subsequent editorial
conference, he'd struck Garrett as wan and subdued, and the ensuing
debate was sobering. Some in the room argued that the Telegraph's wire
was "but a kind of intimidation," maintaining that if Ochs believed Frank

BURIAL 593

innocent, he should continue demanding editorially that Georgia prosecute
the murderers. Others, among them Garrett, advanced the opposite view:

I said we should consider a few simple facts. Mr. O. was the most promi-
nent newspaper publisher in the country. He was a Jew. The Times had
printed more stuff for Frank than any other newspaper and [had] a special
correspondent in Georgia. It was clear what a great many people would
make of those facts. Also, it was clear, and we needn't deny it any longer,
that a majority of the people of Georgia approved of the law having been
taken into the hands of the mob because they believed money had been
used to thwart the forms of justice.

After listening intently to the back-and-forth, Ochs rendered his judg-
ment—the Times would drop the Frank case. Wrote Garrett:

Mr. O has really a remarkable gift of putting himself in the other

man's place. He said that if he were a Georgian he would have resented the
outside interference. Also, he could see how it looked to a great many peo-
ple that Gov. Slaton, law partner of the man who defended Frank, should
have commuted his sentence. It was very hard really to meet the argument
that Frank had received every legal consideration, which undoubtedly he
had . . .

So perishes a great enthusiasm, for the sake of The N.Y. TIMES.

And so perished something of the certitude that had long been integral to
Ochs's self-conception. The experience had been shattering, and for several
days thereafter he stayed home— in Garrett's phrase, "nursing his nerves."
Which was why when the Cobb County grand jury audaciously closed
the books on the Frank case, the New York Times said nothing.

With the abdication of the press, the last credible threat to the vigilance
committee ceased to exist. While several northern Jewish organizations
would continue to agitate for action, they would fail to agree on a plan and
hence do nothing. And as for the private detectives dispatched to Georgia
by the Brooklyn sufragette Bella Newman-Zilberman and her New York
allies, they would prove equally ineffectual. Arriving in Cobb County dis-
guised as day laborers, this group of apparently amateurish hawkshaws
instantly set off alarms. Reported the New York Herald:

marietta— Eight men whose conduct aroused suspicion and who did
not give satisfactory explanations of their presence here were rounded up

594 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

last night, placed in a box car attached to a freight train ready to leave and
sent away. The car was guarded until the train left the town limits.

Since Leo M. Frank was lynched here several persons whose business in
the town was not known have been invited to leave.

The lynching brethren had achieved everything they had set out to
achieve. And they had been assisted by a final bit of subterfuge, one accom-
plished through the unwitting agency of two reporters looking for a positive
angle in what had otherwise been a bleak story.

The newsmen responsible for Judge Newt Morris's universal lionization
were unlikely dupes. Indeed, as they had shown not just in their coverage of
the lynching but in their understanding of the deeper social forces at play,
the New York Times's Charles Thompson and the New York Tribune's John
Leary were keen observers. Since joining the Times in 1899, the 44-year-old
Thompson— a lawyer by training— had distinguished himself first as the
paper's Washington bureau chief, then as the editor of its book review and
finally as a roving political writer who also penned editorials. Along the
way, he had scored numerous exclusives, among them a world-beating
account of a battle between Allied and Chinese forces in Peking during the
Boxer Rebellion. Meantime the 40-year-old Leary was also a formidable
figure. One of the Tribune's most astute national correspondents, he would
win the 1920 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of violent labor unrest in the
coal fields of West Virginia.

Neither man, however, was a match for Newt Morris, who by virtue of
having rescued Leo Frank's body from the howling mob was prime feature
material. Both Thompson and Leary sought Morris out, and he granted
each writer generous interviews. The resulting articles put the judge on a
pedestal. Describing his dramatic address to the throng at Frey's Gin,
Thompson enthused:

Morris is a wonderful stump-speaker, one whose voice has that mellow
and magical quality which captures a crowd and who knows the art of
touching the ignorant as well as that of appealing to the intelligent. He has
a persuasive and arresting intonation and the power at the moment of
being all things to all men.

On the same topic, Leary was equally effusive:

Morris is not a big man physically, but he gives the impression of quiet
power, of being a man who is sure of himself at all times. In a way, his face
seemed familiar, but I could not recall him. That night after my work had
been finished, I placed the resemblance.

BURIAL 595

In person, he is the double of Bat Masterson, clean-cut, lithe and alert,
who twenty or more years ago kept Western bad men in order.

Having thereby elevated Morris to Olympian heights, each reporter
advanced identical conclusions. Declared Thompson:

Judge Newton A. Morris is the hero of one of the most dramatic events
in the whole strange history of the Frank case. He is the only hero of the
Frank lynching.

Echoed Leary:

And there is the story of the trip, in the picture of which there is one
outstanding figure— that of a soft-spoken, youngish man in Marietta at
whose words mobs drop their prey— Judge Newton A. Morris of Cobb
County.

No sooner had these accounts been put on the wires than papers every-
where began running their own encomiums. From Philadelphia to San Fran-
cisco, editors paid tribute to Judge Newt. The New York Herald splashed a
shot of him pleading with the crowd at Frey's Gin atop its front page. Other
sheets did likewise. Even to the end, then, the conspirators cast their spell,
burying the truth of what had happened in Cobb County as surely as
Frank's remains had been interred in Queens. Pronounced one Northern
daily:

"Newt" Morris's part in Georgia's tragic episode should be conspicu-
ously held up to view and emphasized. Morris represented not merely him-
self. He represented the better angel of all our natures.

TWENTY-THREE

In early September, Lucille Frank returned to the Georgia Avenue
home where she and Leo had spent most of their married days. Await-
ing her was a stack of condolence letters, most from high-placed
Atlantans. Wrote Mrs. Sig Montag, the wife of the National Pencil Com-
pany's majority stockholder: "My heart aches with you and for you." Celeste
Parrish, supervisor of the city's Department of Education, vowed that she
was one of the South's "many Christian women who have never wavered in
their belief in your husband's innocence." One by one, the new widow
answered these notes, invariably concluding: "My dear one lives and will
always live in the hearts of those who loved him and to whom it is a labor of
love to strive to clear his name." This, she had decided, would be her life's
mission.

Two weeks after Leo's death, Lucille was in constant pain, her sense of
loss manifesting itself in headaches and nausea. Friends counseled every-
thing from brisk morning walks, to immersion in classical music, to swearing
off chocolates. None of it helped. Which left a seemingly endless stream of
empty hours punctuated only by periodic attempts to contact Leo through
psychic mediums, one of whom, speaking via a "spirit father" in Oklahoma
City, quoted the dead man as saying: "Get all out of life that you can. I am
sorry I had to leave you." What solace Lucille found in these putative mes-
sages from the beyond is impossible to say, although she did take comfort
from a more tangible offering from her late husband, his wedding ring. True
to Frank's last request, the lynching brethren had seen to it that the ring (a
plain gold band engraved "L.S. to L.M.F., Nov. 30, 1910") was delivered to
the Georgian's O. B. Keeler, who lived just off the square in Marietta, with
instructions that he forward it. While the reporter pounced on the scoop
that had literally been placed in his hands (beneath a triple-deck, front-
page screamer, he wrote: "If ever an object was charged with tragedy, it is
the wedding ring of Leo M. Frank. And it was in my pillow last night"), he
dutifully fulfilled his part.

For Lucille Frank, a lifetime's worth of suffering had been compressed
into a few months, and she found herself, though a mere 27 years old,

RECESSIONAL 597

weighed down with what felt like the sorrow of the ages. Her psyche had
been deeply bruised, her opinion of humanity irrevocably darkened. To
make matters worse, nearly everyone in Atlanta's Reform Jewish commu-
nity had been similarly affected, none more so than its spiritual bulwark,
David Marx. In a mid-September letter to the New York Public Library's
Anne Carroll Moore, the rabbi confided: "I [am] not enjoying the best of
health, and I am deficient in bodily vigor. My mind, at times, feels weary."
That said, the man who had once dismissed the notion that anti-Semitism
was endemic in Georgia laid the blame for what had transpired on the anti-
Semitism endemic in Georgia. "You can never kindle a fire out of non-
flammable material," he declared. "Watson is possible because he had the
material to play upon— ignorance, religious hatred, pharisaism [and] theo-
logical pride." The hostility that culminated in Frank's death, he averred,
had been "simply fanned into expression." For the Washington Street com-
munity, this was, in sum, a period of painful reassessment. And as for the
world outside the few blocks surrounding the Temple, there was either
silence ("Strange to relate, the 'N. Y Times' does not carry anything these
days," Rae Frank wrote Lucille)— or worse.

Inflammatory as the Jeffersonian's earlier pronouncements had been,
they actually paled compared to its postlynching pyrotechnics. Beginning
with his final August issue and continuing through September, Tom Watson
lit up the skies with so many rhetorical flares and girandoles that all of
Georgia appeared suffused in their lurid glow. For starters, under the siz-
zling page-one topper "The Wages of Sin Is Death," he amplified upon his
view that Frank's killing had been a legal execution: "A Vigilance Commit-
tee, instead of the Sheriff, carried out a sentence which remained in effect. In
the eyes of the law, THE COMMUTATION DID NOT EXIST"

That said, Watson excoriated Frank's principal supporters, his intention
being to use this moment to drive them permanently from the field. One of
his main targets was John Slaton. After repeating the allegation that the
"vagabond governor" had been "bribed by the Jews," he encouraged him to
continue his travels in the Pacific:

Maybe when he reaches Honolulu, he will think of Rangoon, and take
the road to "Mandalay, where the sun comes up like thunder from China
across the bay."

It might seriously impair his health if he were to return to Georgia.

Watson also singled out Atlanta's newspapers. Mocking the headline with
which the Constitution had editorialized against what happened in Mari-
etta, he roared:

598 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

"Georgia's Shame" is that the Jew advertiser and the Jew banker throt-
tled the Atlanta papers.

"Georgia's Shame" is that Atlanta's dailies have betrayed the State.

Most persistently, Watson bombarded the local and national Jewish leaders
who had banded together to save one of their own. Addressing the lawyers
who'd supervised fund-raising efforts for Frank, he declared: "messers.
haas, Your Gold Calf stands discredited, you and your methods are
universally despised." Addressing Stephen A. Wise, he inquired: "Oh,
Rabbi Wise! Is your soul never wroth when a Jew defiles a gentile? We
believe that your law permits the libertine Jew to use our sister as a harlot."
All of which served as a preamble to a fiery warning to any son of David
who might be contemplating vengeance:

The assassination of myself would be a signal for a bloody outbreak
against the Jews.

The outbreak would not be confined to Georgia.

This country has never had riots against the Jews, as all European coun-
tries have had; but the same causes, if they exist here, will produce the same
results as elsewhere.

Scattered throughout the Jeffersonian's renewed attacks on Frank's
allies were highly colored accounts of how the factory superintendent pur-
portedly met his end. The purpose of these unverifiable reports was to fur-
ther justify the Cobb Countians' actions. Beneath the August 26 banner

FRANK VIRTUALLY CONFESSED; CEASED TO CLAIM INNOCENCE, the Sage

asserted:

When day overtook the Vigilantes and they decided to execute the sen-
tence of the law, [Frank] was asked if he killed the girl.

He was mute!

Then he was asked if he wanted to make any statement, and he
answered, "No!" Not once did he say as he had been saying so often for
two years, "I am innocent."

He was guilty; and his conduct at the last corroborated the official
record.

On September 9, Watson reiterated this contention, insisting that "Frank
closed up stoically, and made no protest of innocence. " On September 16, he
announced that he had learned that Frank, when asked to tell the truth
about Mary Phagan's murder, remarked, the negro told the story!
meaning, of course, that Jim Conley's version was accurate. Finally, on Sep-

RECESSIONAL 599

tember 30, Watson provided what for his tens of thousands of readers
would be the definitive word on the matter, informing them that as Frank
"swung into eternity," he could be heard to implore, "God forgive me."

Distorting and disparaging as the Jeffersonian's portrayal of Frank's
behavior at Frey's Gin was, not everything Watson published in the fall
of 1915 could be dismissed as demagoguery. His ongoing critique of the
defense team ("I never did think that Luther Rosser and Reuben Arnold
amounted to much as criminal lawyers.") and his continual twitting of
Slaton for conflict of interests (he was one of Frank's lawyers) ap-
pealed to a far wider segment of Georgia's populace than outsiders could
have known. So did his remarks on child labor. As he noted in his Septem-
ber 9 issue:

Mary Phagan was not fourteen years old.

The National Pencil Factory, owned by Frank's people, fought our Child
Labor bill, fiercely, and helped to kill it— and, in God's mysterious way, it
cost the Superintendent his life!

Then there was his September 30 exposure of how the New York Times's
coverage of the Frank case had been compromised by its business manager
Louis Wiley's dealings with such partisans as Albert Lasker.

Still, in all, the Jeffersonian's performance in the aftermath of Frank's
death was sulfurous and brutal. In a midautumn salvo directed at Georgia's
Jews en masse, Watson proclaimed: "You have blown the breath of life into
the Monster of Race Hatred; and THIS FRANKENSTEIN, whom you cre-
ated at such enormous expense, WILL HUNT YOU DOWN!" That the
Sage was in a very real sense describing himself was apparently not some-
thing of which he was consciously aware.

Considering the great triumph that Leo Frank's lynching represented both
for those who'd pulled it off and for Tom Watson, the likelihood that anyone
from within Georgia might at this pass arise to repudiate what had occurred
in Marietta and rebuke the Sage seemed all but nil. Yet Thomas W. Loyless
of the Augusta Chronicle did exactly that. The editor was, of course, already
on record as having favored the commutation of Frank's sentence. More-
over, his newspaper had not only published Berry Benson's arguments
pointing to Conley as Mary Phagan's murderer but John Hammond's skep-
tical account of Governor Nat Harris's summer visit to the prison farm in
Milledgeville. Nonetheless, in a signed September 12 broadside headlined
slaton or watson — which? Loyless undertook an altogether more diffi-
cult—and lonely —task. His purpose: "To render a service to my state, which

600 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

still lies bleeding and torn, humiliated and disgraced before the world, as a
result of the most devilish plot that was ever hatched."

At the outset, Loyless asserted that the rabidness rampant in Georgia
during the past weeks had convinced him of the unfairness of Frank's trial:
"I know, now, the mob had charge of his case from beginning to end. The
jury was influenced by public clamor."

One of the chief justifications for clemency thus restated, Loyless
mounted an aggressive defense of the man he regarded as the lone hero of
the piece— John Slaton. As he saw it, any clear-eyed reading of the political,
fiscal and cultural realities at play in Georgia at the time the matter came
before the governor gave the lie to Watson's claim that in commuting
Frank's sentence Slaton had sought to enrich himself. Rather, the editor
wrote, "every logical, selfish reason argued for the gallows." As evidence,
Loyless ticked off a list of the difficulties the governor had to have foreseen
that the decision to spare Frank's life would cause him:

Frank's commutation meant personal danger and great embarrassment
to both Slaton and his family.

Commutation of Frank's sentence meant virtual political suicide. Sla-
ton's political ambition was his chief passion, and his prospects were the
very best.

Commutation of Frank's sentence could not redound to Slaton's pecu-
niary interests, but on the contrary would injure them.

Yet despite all of this, the editor added, Slaton "refused to pass the case on
to his successor, because he felt that to dodge it would amount to cow-
ardice; he commuted the sentence because he thought it was his duty to do
so. You find such examples of courage and fidelity to duty in books, but
rarely if ever in real life."

By way of bolstering his contention that Slaton, far from seeking profit in
granting Frank clemency, had actually acted selflessly, Loyless leveled an
explosive allegation. "About a week before Slaton rendered his decision,"
he charged, "Tom Watson sent Governor Slaton word through a mutual
friend that if the governor would let Frank hang, he (Watson) would be Sla-
ton's 'friend for life,' and that it would result in Slaton becoming United
States senator next time and the master of Georgia politics for twenty years
to come. Of course, Slaton spurned the suggestion— for it meant that he
should sacrifice a human life for the sake of his political ambition. I dare
Watson to deny this, for I have the proof of it in my possession, and he
knows the man by whom I can prove it."

The force of this allegation was undeniable, and on its strength Loyless
embarked on an overview of Watson's many well-known career setbacks

RECESSIONAL 601

(the congressional defeat of 1892, the vice presidential loss of 1896) and
low points, arguing that his anti-Catholic campaign of 19 n and 19 12 had
not only made him "the most thoroughly discredited man in Georgia" but
had cost the Jeffersonian readers. Prior to "seizing on the Frank case" he
had, in short, been in dire straits. With that, Loyless turned the tables on the
Sage, proclaiming that it was he who had achieved financial gains from
recent events. Watson, he wrote, had "abused and aroused, assailed and
slandered" for just one reason— "the cash that flows into his coffers from
the publication of this vile stuff." Asserted the editor:

Watson has three controlling passions— bitterness born of political
disappointment; exaggerated ego, causing him to seek notoriety in any
and every way possible; and avarice— money being to him the greatest
god of all.

Then, addressing Georgians as a whole, Loyless posed what he saw as the
key question: "Why have we made him the guardian of our public con-
science?"

For Leo Frank's beleaguered and bereaved family and friends, Thomas
Loyless's singular effort to, in his words, "lead the people back to the light
of reason" appeared little short of a miracle. David Marx made certain
that the dead man's northern supporters, as well as his mother, received
copies. The Reverend C. B. Wilmer, rector of Atlanta's St. Luke's Episcopal
Church and a supporter of Slaton's commutation decision, used his sermon
the following Sunday to praise the Chronicle editor and to assert that Geor-
gians who continued to take their cues from Watson were "worshipping
false gods." The most eloquent statement of appreciation, however, came in
a September 28 letter to Loyless. Wrote Lucille Frank:

My heartfelt thanks for your brave conduct. Your article is the first ray
of sunshine from darkness, sorrow and tragedy, covering a period so long
that it seems to have been an eternity. It has been so cruel that long ago I
decided that life itself is a delusion— a fearful mockery. How I thank you!

Lucille 's letter to Loyless marked more than just a private moment of
vindication. Because she went on to address several significant topics and
because the editor, after obtaining her blessing, stripped her letter across
the front page of the Chronicle's October 1 editions, it opened a second
front in the paper's campaign to restore Georgians to their senses. Lucille 's
initial point was both poignant and direct:

602 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

I am a Georgia girl, born and reared in this State and educated in her
schools. I am a Jewess; some will throw that in my face, I know, but I have
no apologies to make for my religion. I am also a Georgian, an American,
and I do not apologize for that, either. I sat beside Gentiles in school, they
were my playmates, and I loved them; many of my most intimate girlhood
friends are Christians. My brother-in-law is a Christian and his loyalty and
fidelity in this terrible ordeal has been as staunch as that of anyone of my
own religion.

That said, the widow made her only recorded comment regarding the lynch
party members and, without naming the chief instigator, the men who had
egged them on:

I only pray that those who destroyed Leo's life will realize the truth
before they meet their God— they perhaps are not entirely to blame, fed as
they were on lies unspeakable, their passions aroused by designing per-
sons. Some of them, I am sure, did not realize the horror of their act. But
those who inspired these men to this awful act, what of them? Will not
their consciences make for them a hell on earth, and will not their associ-
ates, in their hearts, despise them?

While Lucille 's letter constituted the most visible weapon in the Chroni-
cle's counterattack, others contributed behind the scenes. None more so
than William Smith. In late September, the lawyer initiated a correspon-
dence with Loyless designed, in his words, "to help you in your fight." As he
declared at the outset: "In reading the Jeffersonian, I find [it] teeming with
misstatements of fact and I will take the liberty of calling your attention to
same from time to time. You will stop Watson only when you check him on
the facts of the Frank case. And if you will dog his steps every week, and
call attention to the inaccuracies of his publication, you are bound to
crush him and his lawless work." Hence when in early October the
Jeffersonian repeated the charge that the murder notes attempted to impli-
cate Newt Lee in Mary Phagan's death and thus bore the sign of Frank's
authorship, Smith wrote the editor that the notes in truth attempted to fin-
ger factory fireman William Nolle and thus pointed to Conley as their
author. Similarly, when the Jeffersonian made the claim that prior to Sla-
ton's executive clemency hearing the defense had told a potential associate
counsel that commutation was a "sure thing," Smith worked up a response
contending that no such communication had occurred.

For Loyless, the submissions from Smith served both to fortify his
resolve and to replenish his arsenal of ideas, and as the fall of 1915 wore on,
the Chronicle fired away at a wide range of targets. Boomed the headlines:

RECESSIONAL 603

A SHAME TO HAVE OUR LAWS SO TRAMPLED UPON, MAKING GEORGIA SAFE

and sane again and, most gleefully, places where sale of jefferso-

NIANS SLUMPED MORE THAN HALF LAST WEEK.

At the same time the Chronicle was attempting to stir up some home-
grown indignation, forces from outside Georgia that had either been
aligned with Frank or were outraged by his fate were also showing signs of
life. At the behest of Louis Marshall, United States attorney general
Thomas Gregory was preparing to prosecute Tom Watson on the grounds
that his articles calling for the lynching constituted obscenity. As a result of
his anti-Catholic diatribes, the Sage had previously faced such charges, win-
ning acquittals. This time, however, the justice department planned to try
Watson in a jurisdiction outside Georgia, thereby increasing the odds of
conviction. Meanwhile, Governor Nat Harris— who at the conclusion of the
prison commission's investigation into the lynching had repaired to his
summer home in Tennessee to recover from a never specified illness— had
returned to Atlanta to find his desk cluttered with letters from Northern
detectives and lawyers proposing methods for ferreting out members of the
lynch party. Typical was the suggestion of Benjamin A. Richmond, former
district attorney of Cumberland, Maryland, who suggested sending an oper-
ative to Marietta who would "mingle freely with the people, sympathizing
with the deed." Eventually, he predicted, his man would obtain "the admis-
sions of a great many parties."

Yet for all the Augusta Chronicle's editorializing and all the threats of
legal action, there was at this date never much danger that Tom Watson
would be silenced or the truth regarding the lynching conspiracy exposed.

For Watson, after having successfully stared down the likes of Adolph
Ochs and William Randolph Hearst, fending off Thomas Loyless amounted
to child's play. In a series of published responses in which he never referred
to Loyless by name, calling him instead either "the little jackass" or "the
near-Catholic editor," the Sage repudiated each of the Chronicle's charges.
Regarding the claim that he'd tried to bribe Slaton, he said that to the con-
trary he'd merely sent a messenger to the governor with the following
instruction: "You tell Jack Slaton to stand like a man against all this outside
pressure in the Frank case, and to uphold the Courts and the Law, and I will
stand by him." To the allegation that he'd been in the Frank case for the
money, he rejoined that since the Jeffersonian was the only Georgia paper
willing to tell the truth about the story, the people had supported it, and his
income had deservedly increased. Then, throwing his haymaker, Watson
declared that it was the Chronicle that had entered the fray on a for-profit
basis, asserting that its editor, like so many others, had sold his news
columns to "the carpetbagger brotherhood who have been the vampires of
the South and grown rich on the toil of Gentiles." In short, Watson con-

604 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

tended that the Haases, Luther Rosser and Slaton himself were behind the
"fusillade on the Jeffersonian." And what had they accomplished by it?

They have simply reopened the Frank case, chunked up every brush-
heap of passion, and thrown fresh fuel on every fire that was dying down.

No sooner had Watson tendered these accusations than death threats
against Loyless began pouring into the Chronicle. Declared a typical corre-
spondent: "We are with Tom Watson and when he calls for help, we are
coming 50,000 strong and some more of Frank's kind will swing."

The United States attorney general, of course, presented a bigger prob-
lem for Watson, but here again the job wasn't anything he couldn't handle.
"I tell the Attorney General to his teeth," the Sage asserted at a mass meet-
ing, "you cannot remove me from the Southern district of Georgia. If I have
to give up my life for having incurred the savage hatred of the rich Jews, it
will be given up right here in the same region where my ancestors gave up
theirs." That said, Watson dispatched an envoy to Governor Nat Harris to
request that he petition Gregory to drop the proceedings altogether. Years
later, Harris, referring to this envoy as simply a "prominent gentleman,"
would write:

The gentleman stated to me that he had just come from Mr. Watson and
had been directed to say to me that if I would prevent such a step being
taken he would give me his earnest support for re-election to any offices
that I might seek.

After securing the governor's assent, the prominent gentleman telephoned
Watson. Recalled Harris: "Mr. Watson expressed his gratification." In the
wake of this meeting, the governor traveled to Washington to see the attor-
ney general. In Harris's telling, Gregory was incredulous:

"What kind of politicians have you got in Georgia?" demanded the
Attorney General. "When you come to me you always denounce Mr. Wat-
son in unmeasured terms, and yet when I propose to silence him or punish
him . . . you come here and take his part and urge me to let him alone. Why
is this?"

I did not answer him according to the inquiry, but contented myself with
telling him that I wanted him to let Mr. Watson alone for the sake of the
honor of my own state and the people.

The truth was more complicated. As previous events had shown— and as
the governor's reaction to the prominent gentleman's offer attested—

RECESSIONAL 605

Harris was hostage to his political ambitions. Moreover, his connections to
several of the lynching brethren left him vulnerable to suasion. As Luther
Rosser wrote the still- vacationing John Slaton:

Our Governor is certainly a wonder. The oyster's backbone is a steel
rod compared to his. I have no idea that the old man will live out his term.
The worry of [all of this] will certainly cost him his life.

Not that Harris was the only compromised Georgian. Shortly after the gov-
ernor departed Washington, the state's entire congressional delegation,
save for Senator Thomas Hardwick, appeared in Gregory's office to make
the same request: Drop the case against Watson. Which was what the attor-
ney general did. Despite the protests of Louis Marshall, the Sage would
escape prosecution.

Which left just a few last details. In response to the raft of letters from pri-
vate detectives who'd hatched plans for investigating the lynching, newly
elected Georgia attorney general Clifford Walker produced a finding
declaring that there was "no fund which could be legally applied to such
purposes." All offers were rejected. Meantime, in the two towns where
the truth was known, payoffs were helping to assure that lips remained
sealed. In mid-September, $30,000 in construction contracts were awarded
for the expansion and modernization of the prison farm. Reported the
Milledgeville Union Recorder: "The new 'L' to the main building will be
about the first of the work to be undertaken. The building will give a dormi-
tory space practically double that at the farm now." The state, in other
words, had fulfilled its obligation. Similarly, near the end of fall, the 25 Mari-
ettans who'd carried out the crime also received a bonus, albeit from a pri-
vate source. As Lawrence Haney's daughter, Dorothy, would subsequently
recall: "A few months later, Daniell Jewelry gave everyone a set of silver-
ware for 'a job well done.' My sister still has some of it. All the men who
went received this."

Leo Frank's allies had been vanquished, his killers protected and paid.
More than that, however, in the deeper war over Georgia's future— the one
whose forces had been so starkly arrayed on April 26, 1913— the past
appeared to have triumphed, and it had done so in a way that would make
itself felt for the next fifty years.

The first call for a revival of the Ku Klux Klan came on the front page of
the Jeffersonian's September 2 edition. Commenting upon the "sectional
and racial hatred poured upon the South" by Frank's supporters, Watson
proclaimed:

606 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

The North can rail itself hoarse, if it chooses to do so, but if [it] doesn't
quit meddling with our business and getting commutations for assassins
and rapists who have pull, another Ku Klux Klan may be organized to
restore HOME RULE.

Like so many of Watson's utterances, his appeal for a new Invisible
Empire struck a deep and mystic chord among many Georgians. Though
the hooded fraternity had not been active in the state for half a century
(Nathan Bedford Forrest's Klan had officially disbanded in 1869), it was not
forgotten. As the historian Charlton Moseley notes in his study Latent
Klanism in Georgia, i8go-igi$: "Forty years after Reconstruction the Ku
Klux Klan [remained] alive in the minds and folklore." Moreover, on Janu-
ary 8, 1915, the storied white-robed Knights had ridden again, this time at
the Los Angeles premiere of D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. Subse-
quently, the movie, based on Thomas Dixon's best-selling novel The Clans-
men, had been showing to both great protest and great acclaim at theaters
in the Northeast. Due to the stereotypic manner in which The Birth of a
Nation portrayed its black characters, the NA ACP had attempted to block
wider distribution. Yet the allure of the film's narrative (young Klansman
Ben Cameron saves Dixie from carpetbaggers while avenging the death of
his sister at the hands of a Negro brute) and the power of its cinematic inno-
vations (armies of sheeted figures sweep across the screen as if come to life)
carried the day. Declared one critic: "If there is a greater picture, may we
live to see it." The success of The Birth of a Nation was assured when Grif-
fith and Dixon arranged a private screening in the White House Blue Room
for Dixon's old college classmate, Woodrow Wilson. When the lights went
up, the president famously remarked: "It's like writing history with light-
ning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." The Atlanta open-
ing was set for December 6.

The climate in which a reconstituted Ku Klux Klan might take wing was,
in short, perfect. Enter William Joseph Simmons. At 35, the self-styled
Colonel Simmons was a failed Methodist preacher from Alabama who in
1915 was in Georgia working as an organizer for the Woodmen of the
World lodge. An inveterate fraternalist whose jacket lapels drooped from
the weight of Knights Templar and Masonic pins, he was tall, redheaded,
deep- voiced and consumed by grandiose ambitions. Yet to date, he had not
discovered his true calling. All this changed when within weeks of Frank's
lynching, Colonel Simmons— after being struck by a car on an Atlanta
street corner— was for a time confined to bed. During his convalescence,
the Colonel, who claimed as a young man to have envisioned ghostriders
galloping across the American sky, decided to inaugurate a new Klan. On

RECESSIONAL 607

October 16, he filed a petition with Georgia's secretary of state seeking a
charter for the organization of which he would be imperial wizard.

Thirty-four men, reputedly among them several who'd made the trip to
Milledgeville, signed Simmons's petition, and on the evening of November
23, Thanksgiving eve, they met at Atlanta's Piedmont Hotel for what was to
be a historic event. Awaiting the party was a chartered bus, but because the
night was blustery, only fifteen hardy souls clambered aboard for the drive
to Stone Mountain, where after hiking up to the granite summit, they found
a giant pitch-and-kerosene-soaked wooden cross that the Colonel had put
into position earlier in the day. The site chosen for this glorious moment
was spectacular— and not just because it could be seen for miles in every
direction. Stone Mountain was owned by the the Venables, the family who
had built the structure that housed the National Pencil Company. That was
the name carved over the factory door. Among those who went to the
mountaintop on November 23 was 13-year-old James Venable, who many
years later would himself become imperial wizard. Whatever the forces that
had claimed Leo Frank, one could make a case that they were indigenous to
the bedrock of Georgia, that they were darkly and primally of the South.
Which was why what was kindled here on this evening, while constituting a
beginning, seemed ancient and immemorial. As Simmons would subse-
quently write:

Suddenly I struck a match and lighted the cross. Everyone was amazed.
And thus that night at the midnight hour while men braved the surging
blasts of the wild wintry mountain winds bathed in the sacred glow of the
fiery cross, the Invisible Empire was called from its slumber of half a cen-
tury to take up a new task and fulfill a new mission for humanity's good.

With the coming of 1916, Leo Frank's Atlanta family members and sup-
porters found themselves either burrowing into deep internal recesses or
scattering to distant cities.

For Frank's German- Jewish intimates who chose to remain in Atlanta, a
shying away from any outward manifestations of their Judaism became the
order of the day. Alan Marcus, Leo and Lucille 's nephew, was a boy at the
time. He would later recall: "We became introverted. We would hardly go
out of the house. My father had practically to give away part of his business,
Marcus Clothing Company. It became Marcus & Holley, 62 Peachtree
Street. He sold to a non- Jewish person. Why would he have sold?"

The desire among Atlanta's Reform Jews to find safety by immersing
themselves more deeply into the city's gentile majority was epitomized by

608 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

the behavior of David Marx. Despite the rabbi's initial impulse to blame
Georgia Christians for Frank's demise, within a few months he had reversed
course and was again making every effort to align his congregation with
those same Christians. "He believed," said one Temple member, "that the
closer the Temple got to the churches, the better off we were." In his study
of Southern Jewry, The Provincials, Eli Evans conveys the gist of the rabbi's
thinking:

The lynching had a profound impact on Marx ... he reacted the only
way he knew ... He became [an even more] starkly powerful force for
assimilation ... He forbade the singing of Hatikva, the Jewish anthem of
hope, as a "song of looking back"; he attacked the idea of the Jewish state
from the pulpit; he refused to use wine or a canopy in wedding ceremonies.

Though Marx stopped short of becoming a self-hating Jew, there can be no
doubt that he did all that he could to make his flock less conspicuous, so
much so that he often cast aspersions on the ritual-heavy practices of
Atlanta's growing Orthodox Jewish population. "The stories of [Marx's]
efforts to blame the Orthodox community for the anti-Semitism that led to
the lynching," notes Evans, left a bad taste that lingered for a generation.

Not all of the Atlanta Jews who'd backed Frank were willing to stay in
the city under such conditions. Among the most conspicuous to depart was
Samuel Boorstin, the young lawyer who in the spring of 1914 had played a
role in putting together the extraordinary motion and had grown close to
the condemned man. During the spring of 1916, Boorstin, who was of Russ-
ian extraction, moved with his wife and their 2-year-old son, Daniel, to
Tulsa, Oklahoma. Eight decades later, Daniel Boorstin, the author of sev-
eral noted works of history and for many years Librarian of Congress, said
that while his father was always tight-lipped about his reasons for leaving,
the precipitating event had occurred after the lynching when thugs bashed
in the windows of a bank owned by his brothers-in-law. Quiet acquiescence
offered no guarantee of safety. It was better to start anew elsewhere.

Also departing Atlanta in the spring of 19 16 was the woman who had
suffered worst of all. As early as late fall of the previous year, Lucille Frank
had contemplated fleeing the scene of her sorrow. For a while, she had
considered going to Chicago and had corresponded with a college there
about enrolling in the study of architecture. Ultimately, however, she had
accepted an offer from her brother-in-law, Charles Ursenbach, to take a
position as manager of a women's ready-to-wear shop he was opening in
Memphis, Tennessee. Lucille's feelings upon her leavetaking appear to have
been hopeful. On February 9, her mother-in-law wrote her:

RECESSIONAL 609

My dear child Lucille, I want to wish you all kinds of luck. If Chas's ven-
ture is successful, it will be up to you only as to whether you are valuable to
him and incidentally to yourself.

However, there could be no denying that the still-grieving woman would
forever carry within herself a knowledge of life's capriciousness. As her
mother-in-law pointedly added: "Each of us is, in a great measure, 'master
of our destiny,' barring accidents."

For a number of Frank's Christian allies, the dislocations, though lacking
any element of religious hostility, were equally wrenching. While by the end
of 1915 John Slaton had returned to Atlanta, accepting the view, spelled out
by Luther Rosser, that "there is no organized force that would seek to do
you harm," his stay was brief. Early in 1916, he and Sallie joined numerous
other notables as guests on Henry Ford's Peace Ship, the oceangoing yacht
on which the automaker crossed the Atlantic in the hope of persuading
European leaders to forgo war. When Ford's efforts, which were widely
regarded as naive, failed, the Slatons came back to Atlanta, but again only
for a few months. The former governor took a job with the Red Cross, and
for the duration of the Great War, he and his wife resided in Romania, pre-
ferring life on the embattled continent to that at home.

Whatever upheavals the Slatons endured, they were mild compared to
those experienced by Thomas Loyless. On the heels of the editor's clash
with Tom Watson, much of downtown Augusta, the Chronicle building
included, was destroyed by fire. The disaster strained Loyless both physi-
cally and financially. Worse, he was beginning to lose his eyesight. By 1919,
he had written his last editorial for the paper and was soon out of journal-
ism altogether, taking a position as manager of a down-at-the-heels spa and
resort in Warm Springs, Georgia. For a man who had once run a major daily
newspaper, 15 dilapidated cabins and a 46-room hotel built around a pool
and mineral bath must have represented a comedown, although Loyless
tried not to look at it that way. He and his backer, the philanthropist George
Foster Peabody, dreamed of creating a rehabilitation center for polio vic-
tims. Which was why shortly after accepting the job, Loyless traveled to the
North. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson's assistant secretary of the
navy, had contracted the disease and was seeking a facility in which to
undergo treatment. During Roosevelt's first stay at Warm Springs, Loyless
helped to oversee the regimen whereby the patient tried to regain feeling
and strength in his withered legs. Eventually, the men became close, and as
Roosevelt improved, he gave his new friend much of the credit. Loyless did
not, however, live to see Roosevelt grow strong enough to return to politics,
much less ascend to the White House. Two years after the future president

6lO AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

began visiting Warm Springs, the sole newspaperman to mount a sustained
protest against the lynching of Leo Frank was dead of cancer.

Like Loyless, William Smith found himself in a tailspin during the early
months of 191 6. The lawyer's phone essentially stopped ringing, as old
clients forsook him and new ones failed to materialize. Soon, he abandoned
his office in downtown Atlanta's gleaming Hurt Building for more humble
quarters on gritty South Forsyth Street. "Dad hung in there trying to make a
living," said his son Walter, "but he'd committed professional suicide by try-
ing to save Frank." Half a year after the lynching, Smith still carried a pistol.

In the summer of 191 6, hoping both to economize and to change his sur-
roundings, Smith moved his family to a farmhouse he owned on Chicka-
mauga Avenue in an as yet undeveloped section west of Atlanta. That fall,
Mary Lou, despite having given birth to the couple's third child a few
months earlier, took a job as an assistant at a new public kindergarten. Ulti-
mately, Smith's efforts to rebuild a life in Georgia came to naught. "Dad
told me he was so disheartened and disgusted that he said, 'I'll never prac-
tice law again,' " Walter Smith recalled years later. "He felt the system
didn't work." Smith, despite his many efforts for the defense, continued to
blame himself for the final outcome. "A major part of the whole thing was
regret, remorse and an extreme feeling of guilt," said Walter Smith. "As Dad
would say, he'd rendered Conley 'impervious to cross-examination.' "

In 1917, his prospects in Atlanta nonexistent and his faith in the law all
but destroyed, Smith quit his practice and left the city, making his way to
Virginia, where he took a job as an assistant shipfitter at the Newport News
Ship Building and Dry Dock Company. Shortly thereafter, he migrated to
an adjacent military base, where he worked as a carpenter building hay
barns. Meantime, Mary Lou and the three children moved back to the fam-
ily's Lucile Avenue home in Atlanta's West End section, where they lived
off the rent paid by an ever shifting collection of boarders, the proceeds
from the sale of the Chickamauga Avenue property and the few dollars
Smith managed to send back from time to time.

For Smith, 1917 went by in a haze of labor and movement. Once again,
he was a tramp alumnus, though now it was not a lark. By 1918, he was in
New York City, where he accepted a job with the William Burns Detective
Agency. What Tom Watson would have made of such a fact can only be
imagined, but as Walter Smith subsequently put it: "Dad needed the job."
Smith was assigned full-time to the Morse Dry Dock Company at the end
of Fifty-sixth Street in Brooklyn. The Great War made the massive ship-
building facility a prime target of espionage. "The people he worked with
thought he was a timekeeper," remembered his daughter, "but he was
working really in security to protect the yard from Germans." The Morse
company was so pleased with Smith that it ultimately hired him away from

RECESSIONAL 6ll

Burns, affording him the financial security to bring his family to New York.
By the year's end, Smith, Mary Lou and the children were living in an apart-
ment on Brooklyn's Sixth Avenue.

While Smith continued to be a valued employee at Morse and Mary Lou
found work teaching at a New York probationary school, she felt lost in the
big city. When the Atlanta Public Schools offered her a position, she jumped
at the opportunity, rushing home with the children. Once again alone, Smith
began to consider resuming his chosen profession. "Dad decided he'd
trained as a lawyer and that he'd practice," recalled Walter Smith.

In the spring of 1920, Smith passed the New York bar and Mary Lou, her
one-year teaching commitment in Atlanta fulfilled, sold the Lucile Avenue
home and its furniture, packed up the china and returned to New York. As an
enticement, her husband had purchased two lots in a still-sylvan section of
Staten Island. During their first months in the Westerleigh neighborhood,
the Smiths lived in a one-room tar-paper shack heated by a potbellied stove.
"It was really roughing it," remembered Walter Smith. Meanwhile, Smith,
with the help of a couple of laborers, dug a foundation, poured concrete and
began framing a new house. By the winter of 1920, the two-story clapboard
dwelling at 149 Mountain View Avenue was finished. Around the same time,
Smith accepted a job at McLaughlin & Stern, a New York City real estate law
firm at 15 William Street just off Wall Street, where he would work as an asso-
ciate for a straight salary. For him at 40, a partnership seemed out of reach.
Smith had regained his belief in the law, yet as his son later reflected: "Dad
had made up his mind he never again wanted to take a criminal case. So he
drew up contracts, visited clients. Real estate law is complicated in New York,
and he found it satisfying." Occasionally, sitting on the porch of their Moun-
tain View house, Smith and his wife would share their regrets about ending
up so far from home and everything familiar to them. No one knew how to
fry chicken in New York, much less prepare beaten biscuits. Yet any nostalgia
the two felt for Atlanta was tempered by their awareness of the reality of
what they'd been through there and a shared conviction that the injustice
visited upon Leo Frank bespoke an ingrained and intolerable small-
mindedness. In fact, they had a phrase for it, one Mary Lou had coined during
her brief attempt at repatriation. "When Mother got off the train at Terminal
Station," her daughter recalled, "she said, 'Atlanta looks squished.' " By this,
Mary Lou did not mean that the capital of the New South appeared compact.
She was speaking figuratively. "It all tied in to the Frank case," explained her
daughter. The Smiths saw Atlanta as a place whose people had failed to
measure up in a dark hour, who had shrunk from the truth. The diminution
was one of the collective heart. How could they ever go back?

6l2 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Though few came right out and said so, Georgians in general and Atlantans
in particular found life in the aftermath of the Frank affair to their liking.
The slogan "a return to normalcy" would not enter the lexicon until Warren
Harding's 1920 presidential campaign, but it perfectly describes the atmos-
phere. Long-standing views had been affirmed, and the evidence appeared
across a broad spectrum. For one thing, there was the tolerant, indeed
amused, reaction to the further escapades of the drama's Negro hero.

Around 1 a.m. on November 1, 1915, Jim Conley was arrested along
with ten other men and women in Atlanta's Vine City neighborhood at
what the Georgian termed a "disorderly house." The next morning, he was
arraigned in police court. However, there, as the Journal dryly reported,
"instead of drawing a fine, Jim drew a bride." This unusual resolution arose
from Conley's stated desire to marry one of the seductresses with whom
he'd been apprehended. To this, Judge George Johnson not only assented,
but when Conley professed to have insufficient funds to buy a license, the
magistrate passed the hat, contributing a large share of the money from his
own pocket. Then, in the presence of a crowd of lawyers and gawkers, John-
son performed the ceremony, pronouncing James Conley and Mary Glover
man and wife. On the way out the door, the groom begged reporters, "Don't
write me up, for God's sake. I've been in the papers enough." But, of course,
his request fell on deaf ears. And this was just the beginning.

Throughout the remaining weeks of 1915, the first months of 191 6 and, in
fact, much of the next three years, Jim Conley would remain almost con-
stantly in the news. Only now, the stories would chart a rapid spiral down-
ward. On November 7, six days after his wedding, the new husband was
picked up, in the Journal's phrase, for "bride beating." Several weeks later,
he was arrested for the same offense. On February 13, 1916, the Constitu-
tion allowed that "Conley is 'in again' for wife beating." Hard upon this
spree, the man whose testimony had doomed Leo Frank was charged with
public drunkenness, then vagrancy. By 1918, Conley, in one writer's estima-
tion, had "spent more time in jail than out of it" since Mary Phagan's mur-
der. And the worst was still to come. At 12:30 a.m. on January 13, 1919,
during an attempted break-in at a West Side Atlanta drugstore, the Negro
was shot in the chest by the proprietor, who had been lying in wait follow-
ing a burglary several nights before. After a lengthy stay at Grady Hospital,
Conley stood trial in superior court, where investigating officers testified
that he had not only been in possession of tools useful in breaking and
entering when apprehended but that he was suspected in 31 prior incidents.
The jury quickly voted to convict, and Judge John Humphries pronounced
a sentence of 20 years, whereupon Conley, far from looking stricken, burst
into laughter. Cracked a court attache: "He figures the governor will pardon
him out— the son of a gun."

RECESSIONAL 613

By any measure, it had been a tawdry sequence of events, yet far from
inspiring Atlantans to rethink their opinions, Conley's postlynching misad-
ventures served to preserve the predominant view. To wit: Jim was an igno-
rant, drunken lowlife incapable of manufacturing a complex story designed
to implicate Frank in little Mary's murder. Though a minority thought differ-
ently (one lawman who met Conley in 1918 called him "the smartest criminal
[I've] ever come in contact with"), the verdict was all but unanimous— the
authorities had been right about this Negro.

At the same moment Jim Conley was beginning his descent, the two
white Georgians most responsible for Leo Frank's fate were beginning a
corresponding ascent. The process started with a spring 1916 visit by Hugh
Dorsey to the home of Tom Watson. Shortly thereafter, the Fulton County
solicitor general announced his candidacy for governor, at which point the
Sage, forsaking his pledge of just a few months earlier, denounced Nat Har-
ris, who was seeking reelection, as a Slaton man. In his endorsement, Wat-
son termed Dorsey "the fearless Solicitor General who won the great fight
for law and order, and the protection of womanhood, in the Frank
case," adding: "The Jeffersonian is for him tooth and nail"

Predictably, Dorsey, who played to the electorate's anti-Jewish leanings
("The attitude of the Hebrews in the Frank case," he told gatherings,
"has demonstrated the fact that the successful prosecution of a Hebrew is
regarded as a persecution"), was swept into office. Moreover, a number of
other Watson-backed proposals and candidates were also successful. Not
only did the state Democratic Party adopt a platform plank condemning all
attempts on the part of the United States government to extradite Georgia
citizens for trial, but Atticus Henslee, the Frank juror whom the defense
had accused of anti-Semitic bias in its initial appeal, was elected to the
Prison Commission. In his endorsement of the former buggy salesman, the
Sage wrote: "He is the juror who was so outrageously denounced by
luther rosser in the frank case! Henslee stood firm and true."

For Watson, this was a time of triumph. Politically, the only goal that now
eluded him was elective office of his own. Little wonder, then, that in 1920
he announced his candidacy for the United States Senate seat held by his
sworn enemy, Hoke Smith. There was, however, another aspirant— Hugh
Dorsey. During the campaign, which played out against a backdrop of post-
war anxiety regarding aliens and "Reds," Watson and Dorsey took sharply
delineated positions. (Hoke Smith, who tacked to the center, soon fell
hopelessly behind.) Dorsey, who was supported by the American Legion,
championed Woodrow Wilson's call for a League of Nations to adjudicate
international conflicts. Watson, who was supported by the Ku Klux Klan,
opposed the League, but in a twist, he became a voice for civil liberties, rail-
ing against the efforts of Wilson's new attorney general, Mitchell Palmer, to

614 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

imprison laborers and immigrants suspected of harboring communist sym-
pathies. In fact, the Sage was so outspoken on the matter that as he criss-
crossed Georgia, he often referred to the farmers who met him in one hamlet
after another as red-clay Bolsheviki. Though some might have found the
Watson of 1920 a far cry from the one who'd attacked Leo Frank, he believed
that he was merely continuing his battle for the workingman. By the cam-
paign's end, he was drawing vast crowds, and his victory was a foregone
conclusion. After years in the wilderness, Watson was back. And as for Dor-
sey, he retained the job of governor until June 192 1.

Incongruously enough, Dorsey, though never wavering in his belief in
Frank's guilt, was Georgia's most progressive governor of the time. Con-
cerned by a plague of violence that met the state's black veterans as they
came marching home from war, he authored a groundbreaking 192 1 study
entitled "A Statement as to the Negro in Georgia." Under such headings as
"The negro lynched," "The negro held in peonage" and "The negro subject
to individual acts of cruelty," he detailed 135 incidents of racial injustice
that had occurred over a two-year period, declaring: "If the conditions
indicated by these charges should continue, both God and man would
justly condemn Georgia." Dorsey did not, however, stop here. In a series
of sweeping proposals, he outlined legal remedies whereby the governor
could dispatch state police officers to potential trouble spots and convene
grand juries to investigate lynchings. Not surprisingly, the responses to
Dorsey's ideas varied widely. At an interracial conference in Atlanta, he
won the support of many who'd spoken out against him during the Frank
affair, including the Georgian's James B. Nevin, the Reverend C. B. Wilmer
and Rabbi David Marx. But at mass meetings throughout the state, the
populace at large condemned him. Roared a typical Constitution headline:
dorsey peonage pamphlet scored. When his program came before the
legislature it was defeated. Nonetheless, his thinking on the topic was ahead
of its time, and so it remained. In fact, as a Fulton County Superior Court
judge during the 1930s, Dorsey was at the center of a critical First Amend-
ment case that enabled him to make another enlightened decision. A 19-
year-old Negro named Angelo Herndon had been convicted of distributing
communist literature on the steps of the Atlanta post office. He was repre-
sented by a young lawyer named Elbert Tbttle, who was a Cornell student
during the Frank trial. "I took the Herndon case to Hugh because I wanted
to give him a chance to pay his debt to society for what he'd done to Leo
Frank," Tuttle recalled years later in his chambers at the Fifth District
United States Court, from whence during the 1960s he'd presided over the
desegregation of many of the South's schools. Turtle's instincts were cor-
rect: Dorsey ruled that Georgia had denied Herndon his right to free
speech. The United States Supreme Court subsequently concurred.

RECESSIONAL 615

Watson, meanwhile, continued to stand defiantly at the barricades. Not
that there weren't anomalies here, too. In the fall of 192 1, during a debate in
Washington over the senatorial candidacy of Henry Ford, who had been
disseminating virulent anti-Semitic literature through a journal called the
Dearborn Independent, the Sage proclaimed:

Henry Ford is editing a paper devoted to war upon the Jewish race—
not some criminal Jew, convicted or unconvicted— but upon the whole
race— the race that produced Moses, Solomon, David . . . and Jesus Christ.
All Christendom rests upon a Book, and that Book is the Book holding the
creed of a Jew. Nevertheless, Henry Ford condemns the whole race, forget-
ting that in all our wars the Jew has fought side by side with the Gentile,
forgetting that the soundest principles of democracy and good government
and catholic humanity are to be found in the sacred parchments of the
Jews, forgetting . . . that Jews compose music that will perhaps outlive the
Pyramids ... I doubt the senatorial fitness of a man who indicts a whole
race because of the faults of some of its black sheep.

Watson's criticism of Ford was doubtless sincere. In the end, however, it
indicated no real change. (To him, the automaker was just another Yankee
industrialist.) More typical was his reaction to a congressional inquiry, also
in the fall of 192 1, into Klan-related violence. Bursting into a capitol hear-
ing room, Watson positioned himself at the side of the probe's main witness,
Imperial Wizard Simmons, vowing to protect him from "any attacks from
anybody." Shortly thereafter, in reply to a question from a fellow senator as
to whether he himself was a member of the Invisible Empire, the Sage
proudly allowed that back home, he was regarded as "the King of the Ku
Klux." Which would be how he was remembered. Suffering from asthma
and the afflictions of old age, Watson died in Washington of a cerebral hem-
orrhage on September 26, 1922. At his funeral in Georgia, the most impres-
sive floral arrangement was an eight-foot-high cross of red roses sent by the
Klan.

And so the Sage was gone, but through the 1920s, his hooded legatees
would accrue power and influence— and not just in Georgia. From the
Klan's white-columned Imperial Palace in Atlanta, Kleagles, as its salesmen
were known, spread the message to "White, Gentile, Protestant, American
Citizens," who in turn paid a $10 fee for insignias and robes. By 1923, Impe-
rial Wizard Simmons was ensconced in a mansion, Klan Krest, and mem-
bership totaled over a million, a number that included Georgia's new
governor, Cliff Walker, who eight years before as Nat Harris's attorney gen-
eral had produced the finding that forbade the expenditure of state funds to
investigate Leo Frank's lynching.

6l6 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

The Klan reached its apogee as a political force during the summer of
1924 when it nearly seized control of the national Democratic Party. True to
form, the movement began in Georgia when the grand dragon of the local
realm instructed delegates to the state convention in Atlanta to choose del-
egates to the national convention in New York pledged to the Klan's presi-
dential candidate— William Gibbs McAdoo.The result: 85 percent of those
selected to attend the gathering at Madison Square Garden were either
members of or in sympathy with the Invisible Empire. Upon reaching New
York, the Georgians found many kindred spirits; the Klan presence was so
pervasive that its leaders took a floor atop the Hotel McAlpin.The conven-
tion's fiercest fight was over a proposed platform plank condemning politi-
cal secret societies and pledging the party "to oppose any effort on the part
of the Ku Klux Klan to interfere with the religious liberty or political free-
dom of any citizen because of religion, birthplace or racial origin." Klan del-
egates rallied against the plank, and polling was conducted in a hostile
atmosphere. Notes one historian: "Fist-fights were started. State standards
were broken." In the middle of the ultimately successful battle against the
plank was a Georgia delegate who nine years before in an oak grove out-
side Marietta had kicked over the table that led to the Invisible Empire's
reemergence.That man was Judge Newt Morris.

As the years began to pass, Leo Frank's supporters all but stopped speaking
publicly about the case. For those who stayed in Atlanta, coexistence with
their victorious opponents demanded as much. Though this was true for
everyone, it was more true for Luther Rosser, whose son, Luther Jr., was, of
course, married to Hugh Dorsey's sister, Sarah. "The only way the relation-
ships in the family survived is that no one ever discussed the subject,"
Rosser's grandson Tom Shelton later recalled. Following Rosser's death
from a heart attack in 1923, the topic remained taboo. "We shared Christ-
mases with the Dorseys through the 1930s," added Shelton, "and as a conse-
quence we just didn't talk about it— it was too close."

The reluctance of Frank's gentile allies to address the topic sprang
merely from discomfiture, but for members of Atlanta's German- Jewish
elite, the silence had about it an added air of repression and dread. Decades
afterward, Clarence Feibelman, who as a teenager had attended the trial
and subsequently went to work for the Montag Paper Company, recalled:
"It was a subject that wasn't talked about at all. We didn't want to revive a
nightmare." Leonard Haas's widow, Bea, echoed this view: "The Jewish
community was scared to death and kept a low profile." Herbert Haas's son
Joseph, who practiced law with his father for nineteen years, concurred:
"My father never wanted to talk about it. He never got over the horror of it.

RECESSIONAL 617

It was just a terrible thing that happened in his life." Charles Wittenstein,
general counsel to the Southern office of the Anti-Defamation League, an
organization that was founded in 1913 and came into its own primarily as a
result of the Frank lynching, put the Temple congregation's feelings into
perspective: "The attitude of the older Jews was 'leave it alone.' What was
behind it was a fear that if the case was reopened, they'd experience the
[same] kind of anti-Semitism again."

The Atlanta Jewish community's determination to quell conversation
about the Frank case, and, most especially, to keep further mention of it out
of the newspapers, revealed itself again and again. The first and most dra-
matic incident occurred in 1922 when a young Dutch reporter expressed
interest in revisiting the matter. Shortly after landing a job at the Constitu-
tion, Pierre Van Paassen immersed himself in the records at the Fulton
County Courthouse. There, he discovered what seemed to be critical new
evidence— Frank's dental X rays and photographs of Mary Phagan's body
"showing teeth indentures." Confirming long-standing speculation, Van
Paassen later wrote: "The murdered girl had been bitten on the left shoul-
der and neck before being strangled." What was truly startling, however,
was this: "The photos of the teeth marks on her body did not correspond
with Leo Frank's set of teeth ... If those photos had been published at the
time of the murder ... the lynching would probably not have taken place."
Filled with youthful enthusiasm, the reporter secured his editor's permis-
sion to undertake a series intended, as he'd subsequently put it, to "establish
Frank's innocence and rehabilitate his memory." Then came the hurdles.
Upon consulting Frank's friend and lawyer Henry Alexander, Van Paassen
was told to back off. "The Jewish community still felt nervous about the
incident. If I wrote the articles old resentments might be stirred up . . .
It was better, Mr. Alexander thought, to leave sleeping lions alone." Join-
ing the chorus of naysayers were several unnamed rabbis (David Marx
undoubtedly among them) who "actually pleaded" with Van Paassen's edi-
tor to cancel the assignment. Reporters meet such resistance every day, but
what followed was unusual. "Lay off the Frank case if you want to keep
healthy," read the unsigned note Van Paassen presently received. Shortly
thereafter, as he was driving home one morning, "a large automobile"
pulled up beside his and forced it "into the track of a fast-moving street car
coming from the opposite direction." Van Paassen escaped injury, but his
vehicle was demolished. Badly shaken, he dropped the story. Nonetheless,
all of it— the apparently telltale photographic and X-ray images he saw at
the courthouse, the insistent lengths to which some Atlanta Jews went to
dissuade him from going forward— remained vivid in his mind throughout a
career that saw him rise to the top of Parisian journalism. In his 1964 mem-
oir To Number Our Days, Van Paassen devoted as much space to his brief

6l8 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

and nearly fatal attempt to revive interest in Leo Frank as he did to some of
the European personages who stood center stage in his later life.

Through the succeeding generations, Atlanta's Jews remained commit-
ted to the view that the less said about the Frank case, the better. During the
1940s, when the lawyer Arthur Powell, a supporter of Slaton's commutation
decision, published a book in which he tantalizingly asserted that he was
"one of the few people who know that Leo Frank was innocent," he was
restrained from revealing his hand by the intervention of his law partner,
Max Goldstein. The nature of the information Powell possessed is unclear
(the consensus is that it further implicated Jim Conley), but whatever it
was, there is little doubt as to what happened to it. Following Powell's
death, Goldstein— believing that it would only inflame the feelings of those
in disagreement— destroyed it.

The thoroughness with which Atlanta's Jews succeeded in banishing the
Frank case from public discourse might suggest that they had also suc-
ceeded in banishing it from their collective consciousness. But that was not
so. In truth, the efforts made to expunge all mention of the topic offered
proof of just how firmly it remained foremost in their minds. The outer
silence existed in direct proportion to an inner awareness, and nothing bet-
ter illustrates the point than an ongoing obsession of Henry Alexander's.
Even as the lawyer had been discouraging Pierre Van Paassen from open-
ing old wounds, he had himself been assiduously seeking information about
men and women involved in the affair. In fact, from 1916 until the early
1950s, the lawyer amassed scores of clippings. Some of the stories— among
them, a series of 192 1 articles detailing the indictment of Monteen Stover
for participating in a badger scam in which she enticed married men into
hotel rooms, then allegedly bribed them on threat of exposure— must have
proved satisfying, offering further evidence of how disreputable many of
the prosecution witnesses had indeed been. Other pieces— a 1919 account
revealing the death of the longtime Constitution reporter Britt Craig from
pneumonia shortly after taking a job at the New York Sun; a 1925 story
reporting the death of Frank's mother— enabled Alexander to close the
books on various of the tale's leading figures. Then there were the dis-
patches that could not have helped but gall, most especially one from
1933 reporting Governor Eugene Talmadge's extension of a full pardon to
William Creen, the prison farm inmate who'd slashed Frank's throat several
weeks before the lynching. There were also numerous articles regarding the
further careers of a number of Mariettans— Herbert Clay,for one— indicat-
ing that Alexander possessed a strong inkling as to who was responsible for
Frank's execution. In the end, the most poignant item in the lawyer's file
was a photograph taken either while he was a student at the University
of Georgia or shortly thereafter showing him and his roommate, Hugh

RECESSIONAL 619

Dorsey, chatting amiably while leaning against a tree trunk at a picnic. In
1943, upon learning that Dorsey would be present, Alexander had refused
to attend the fiftieth reunion of his University of Georgia class. Yet he held
on to the picture, for it provided an image of what life had been like for
Atlanta's Jews before the lynching.

Not surprisingly, there was another group of Georgians who maintained a
strict silence about the Frank case. In the index to a 1935 history of Marietta
entitled The First Hundred Years, the victim of the town's most notorious
crime merits but a single dry entry: "Frank, non-resident." Along with a few
other similarly discreet but prideful communal acknowledgments— in the
1920s, the trunk of the oak tree at Frey's Gin received a commemorative
whitewashing, while during the same period one of the sleeves of Frank's
nightshirt was framed and put on display behind the bar of a roadhouse a
few miles south of the lynching site— this was it in terms of public recogni-
tion. Recalled Marietta Journal associate editor Bill Kinney: "You can't
imagine what it used to be like around here. Just the mention of the case
would cause people to admonish you."

Yet the inexpressible truth was that for the Mariettans involved the
lynching constituted a defining event. For nearly half a century, the political,
financial and social course of the town would be influenced by what had
transpired at Frey's Gin. Leo Frank was, in brief, forever a resident.

The Mariettan who benefited most immediately from the lynching was
Judge Newt Morris. Reelected to the judgeship of the Blue Ridge Circuit in
1 91 6, he would retain that position until 1920, then assume the chairman-
ship of the Marietta school board. His successes on the national political
stage continued at the 1928 Democratic Party convention (he was chairman
of the Rules and Order of Business Committee) and again at the 1932 gath-
ering. In 1934, Morris reset his sights on big game— Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Responding to the president's attempt to secure another term for Georgia
Democratic committeeman John S. Cohen, managing editor of the Atlanta
Journal, the judge wired party chairman James A. Farley: "You may save
him now, but the loyal Georgians will beat hell out of him in 1936. Georgia
Democrats are red-blooded Americans capable of running their own affairs
without outside interference." Ultimately, Morris contracted rheumatoid
arthritis, and for the last several years of his life, he was practically immo-
bile. Still, thanks to the ministrations of his Negro manservant, he was a
presence on the Marietta square until shortly before his death in 194 1.

John Tucker Dorsey reaped similar rewards as a result of his role in the
lynching. After completing his term as the legislature's prison committee
chairman and receiving a full pardon from his distant cousin Governor

620 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Hugh Dorsey for his youthful murder conviction, he succeeded Herbert
Clay as solicitor general of the Blue Ridge Circuit, thereby assuring that the
group responsible for the events at Frey's Gin retained control of the pros-
ecutor's office. After returning to private practice, Dorsey was reelected
to the statehouse, where he became connected to the Gene Talmadge
machine. During the 1950s, he would serve as Cobb County ordinary and
on the board of Marietta's Larry Bell Park. Late into his days, John Hick
remained a big, gruff, respected figure. At a fish camp he owned on the Coo-
sawattee River near Ellijay, 50 miles north of Marietta, the town's bucks
gathered every summer to play cards and drink corn liquor— to become, in
the words of one of them, men.

Numerous members of the Brumby family likewise prospered in the
wake of the lynching. True, the two family members most directly involved
in the crime— brothers Bolan and Jim— did not remain in Georgia. In the
late teens, Bolan Brumby moved to Clearwater, Florida. Jim Brumby, who
spent the war years as Marietta's mayor, left in 1921 to take a job as city
manager in Ocala, Florida. Yet it was also in 1921 that Otis Brumby, scion of
the family's other branch, sold his interest in the St Petersburg Times and
returned home to start a new paper, the Cobb County Times, which in 195 1
merged with the Marietta Journal. Fifty years later, a Brumby still presided
over not just the Journal and a string of profitable suburban weeklies but
the Brumby Chair Company, manufacturer of the famed rocker, five of
which sat on the White House's Truman Balcony during the presidency of
fellow Georgian Jimmy Carter.

Though the powerful men who helped to arrange, then cover up, Frank's
lynching ultimately gained the most from their handiwork, some of those
who played lesser parts profited as well. In return for his funding of the raid,
the banker Robert A. Hill was not prosecuted when he subsequently shot
and killed his son-in-law. One of the last to draw on this same account was
the farmer Lawrence Haney. Like many of the men who made the trip to
Milledgeville, Haney spent the 1930s and '40s working in patronage jobs.
For a while, he helped Black Newt Morris run the Cobb County chain gang,
then he served on the Marietta police force. Haney's final such position was
night security guard at the city's Larry Bell Park during the 1950s. By this
point, he had become an occasionally drunken presence who sometimes
threatened park patrons. His behavior was so unpredictable that a young
park board member tried to have him fired. Prior to the necessary review
session, this naive reformer believed he controlled three of the board's four
votes. There was one outstanding vote— it belonged to John T\icker Dorsey.
No sooner had the meeting to decide Haney's fate started than Dorsey
threw his weight behind his loyal underling, instantly assuring that he
retained his employment. As Bill Kinney, who was the board member

RECESSIONAL 621

who'd sought Haney's removal, later put it: "There was one thing that J. T.
Dorsey would not tolerate— anyone messing with old man Lawrence
Haney."

Of all the beneficiaries of the Frank lynching, the one who went furthest
was the one whose role, save at the end, remains obscure. Whether John
Wood did any more than serve as the wheelman, helping Judge Newt Mor-
ris race Frank's body from Marietta to the Atlanta city limits, will probably
never be known. However, it is a certainty that thereafter Wood rapidly
achieved power and renown. In 1916, he was elected to the state legislature.
In 1 92 1, he was elected solicitor general of the Blue Ridge Circuit, succeed-
ing John T. Dorsey. Following four years as North Georgia's chief prosecu-
tor, he won Newt Morris's old job as judge of the Blue Ridge Circuit, a
position he would hold until 1931, when he was elevated once again, this
time to a seat in the United States Congress, representing Georgia's Ninth
District. In 1934, Wood suffered a rare setback, losing in the Democratic
primary. He returned home, where for the next ten years he prospered as a
defense lawyer. In 1945, Wood was returned to Congress. Back in Washing-
ton, he was appointed to the House Un-American Activities Committee, of
which he would become chairman in 1950. Among his proteges was a brash
young California congressman assigned to his committee— the future pres-
ident Richard Nixon. During HUAC's 1953 investigation into communist
activity in Hollywood, it was Wood who subpoenaed Lillian Hellman to tes-
tify, thereby inadvertently engendering the playwright's oft-quoted demur.
In a letter to Wood, the author of The Little Foxes declared:

I am not willing ... to bring bad trouble to people who, in my past asso-
ciation with them, were completely innocent of any talk or any action that
was disloyal or subversive. I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any
form, and if I had ever seen any, I would have considered it my duty to
have reported it to the proper authorities. But to hurt innocent people
whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman
and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to
fit this year's fashions.

And so life progressed for the better part of the lynching brethren. Yet
there was a small contingent for whom the weight of it all proved burden-
some. In several instances, in fact, reverberations from the events at Frey's
Gin may have sent participants to an early grave.

Though Herbert Clay would remain solicitor general of the Blue Ridge
Circuit until 1918, within two years of Frank's death he was in trouble. His
difficulties began, at least publicly, at 12:30 a.m. on May 19, 1917, when he
allegedly accosted a 26-year-old nurse as she walked across the Marietta

622 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

town square. According to Bobby Lou Greer, Clay "grasped her by the arm
and insulted her." The next evening, Mrs. Greer, who that morning had
demanded an apology, met her well-known assailant as he was emerging
from a movie theater.

"I have been waiting all day for that apology," she announced by way of
greeting.

"I am ready to apologize now," came the reply.

In the end, however, no apology was tendered. Rather than give Clay a
chance to exercise his charm, Mrs. Greer lashed out at him with a buggy
whip she had been holding in her hands. All told, she struck eight blows.
Roared the headline atop the next day's Georgian: woman uses horse-
whip ON SOLICITOR GEN. CLAY.

On the surface, the encounter with Bobby Lou Greer was of a piece with
the other outrageous escapades to which Clay had been linked since his
brief but disruptive tenure at the University of Georgia. Yet on a deeper
level, the incident indicated a new lack of restraint, one suggestive not of a
man trying to get away with as much as possible but of one begging to be
caught. And there would be more.

On a Sunday night sometime later in 1917 or early in 1918, Clay checked
in to Dave Jarrett's Hotel, a celebrated lodging house in the little mountain
town of Ellijay, where the Blue Ridge Circuit was set to hold a week of
court. The docket was full of cases, yet rather than retire early, Clay and the
lawyer with whom he was rooming, John Tucker Dorsey, stayed up until all
hours drinking. As Dorsey's longtime partner, Luther Hames, later related:
"Dorsey told me that when Herbert drank, he got loose bowels. Anyway, he
took a shit in bed and tried to roll Dorsey into it. That's where the fight
started." The next thing anyone knew, Dave Jarrett was pounding on the
door of another guest, Newt Morris.

"Judge," the hotelier screamed, "you've got to do something about
those damn lawyers. They've shit all over their room, in the bed clothes."

"Bring me the bill and I'll pay it," a furious Morris responded. "Then
burn the bed clothes."

The story quickly became a staple of after-hours conversation among mem-
bers of the Marietta bar. More significant, it ruined the solicitor's relation-
ship with Morris, who now grew to disdain and possibly fear him. If Clay's
lack of control was such that he'd leave a stinking mess for the judge to clean
up, what guarantee was there that in a similar moment of insobriety he
would not divulge the story of Frank's lynching? Reflecting on the subse-

RECESSIONAL 623

quent tension between the men at the heart of the conspiracy, Luther Hames
observed: "Judge Newt Morris and Herbert Clay were terrible enemies."

Another result of Clay's loutish behavior was that his marriage came
apart. Marjorie Lockwood Clay had put up with more from Herbert than
most women would have. Not only was there his drinking and carousing,
but there was her apparent disgust regarding his involvement in the events
at Frey's Gin. Marjorie's father was Montgomery's top society architect,
and she had been raised in a home free from anti-Semitism. According to
Bob Gamble, senior architectural historian for the Alabama Historical
Commission, "Mr. Lockwood was the darling of the Jewish community." In
1919, Marjorie was granted a divorce and custody of Eugene Herbert, Jr.

Living with his mother and dangerously overweight (the once handsome
rake had ballooned into a bloated 40-year-old with a 54-inch waist), Clay
nevertheless did his best to carry on in the old style. And to some degree he
succeeded, winning election to the Georgia Senate in 1920, then securing
the body's presidency, which in effect made him the state's lieutenant gov-
ernor. Clay never lost his ability to use his ebullience to get himself out of
jams. In late 1 921 or early 1922, he demonstrated as much following an inci-
dent that saw him forced to walk home through downtown Marietta wear-
ing only his underwear after nearly being caught in flagrante delicto with a
neighbor's wife. Rather than despair, Clay, accompanied by several clergy-
men, appeared the next day on the square in front of the statue of his
revered father and asked for forgiveness. As those who were there would
later recount, he declared: "I have befouled another man's nest." He was
reelected to the senate by a large majority.

For all of this, however, Clay's life was careering toward a terrible con-
clusion. On a January night in 1923, a young Marietta girl named Annie
Gober who was a passenger in Clay's car was killed just south of town when
he swerved to avoid oncoming traffic and she was tossed through his wind-
shield. Though no charges were filed against Clay, the accident fit into the
larger careless pattern. The end came at 3 a.m. on Friday, June 22, when
Clay was found dead in a room at an Atlanta hotel. A coroner's inquest
ruled that death resulted from "fatty degeneration of the heart." The truth,
however, was evidently different. "Clay was killed when a whore hit him
over the head with a liquor bottle," Luther Hames asserted years later.
Advancing another theory was Clay's son, who maintained that his father
was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan.The basis for this view is twofold. First,
Clay had attacked the group in the state senate. Second, his besotted unre-
liability was a threat not only to the lynching brethren but to the hooded
fraternity. Whichever, there's now no way of knowing. As Herbert Jr., citing
his family's preference for decorum at all costs, would later put it: "My
grandmother covered up everything."

624 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

While Clay was the most prominent of the conspirators to meet an ugly
and premature end, he was not the only one. Just before noon on March 10,
1925, 58-year-old William Frey, the man who'd knotted the rope and on
whose property Frank was lynched, shot himself to death in front of a corn
crib on his farm, not far from the hallowed oak tree. Years later, a Marietta
historian asserted that Frey's death "was not thought to be related to the
Frank matter but to concern over his health, which declined dramatically
after a stroke in September, 1924." Still, following so closely upon Clay's
death, the suicide struck a chord. As Deveraux McClatchey, Jr., whose
father was one of Clay's pallbearers, would subsequently say: "My dad said
everyone involved suffered a violent death."

In truth, Clay and Frey were the exceptions. Nonetheless, several others
involved in Frank's lynching lived their final days in fear. As Otis Cheatham,
a railroad conductor who in the summer of 1970 nursed George Daniell,
one of the mission's field lieutenants, through his last illness, recalled: "He
was kind of scared; I don't know what of, but he had a pistol by his bed."

Another of the participants spent his concluding years consumed by a
different concern-that of exposure. After retiring from Congress in 1955,
John Wood was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to a three-
year term on the Subversive Activities Control Board. Both of Georgia's
United States senators supported the nomination. However, at a hearing
before a subcommittee of the upper chamber's Judiciary Committee, wit-
nesses testified that not only had Wood been a member of the Ku Klux Klan
during the 1920s but that as chairman of HUAC, he'd derailed an investiga-
tion into the group. After quoting a statement in which the former con-
gressman referred to Klan affiliation as "an old American custom, like
illegal whiskey drinking," Civil Rights Congress Secretary William J. Patter-
son, in words that must have made Wood, who was present in the room,
wince, brought up another "old American custom," declaring:

Five thousand lynchings have taken place in the South, a large part of them
in Georgia. No lyncher has ever been brought to justice, nor have I heard
Mr. Wood open his mouth on one occasion where these acts of violence
were taking place.

By way of concluding his argument that Wood's nomination should be
rejected, Patterson accused him of being "a racist and an anti-Semite." Such
charges presented a powerful threat to the former congressman's prospects.
And while at a second hearing, Wood mounted a vigorous defense—
contending that he'd dropped out of the Invisible Empire following just one
meeting, prosecuted Klan members while solicitor general of the Blue

RECESSIONAL 625

Ridge Circuit, and never blocked a HUAC probe of the group— his nomi-
nation was dead.

Finally, a handful of those involved in Frank's lynching confronted, to lesser
and greater degrees, the painful truth. For two men, the awareness eventu-
ally dawned that they'd been exploited by the conspiracy's leaders. "My dad
definitely thought he'd been used," Lawrence Haney's daughter, Dorothy,
recalled. And Black Newt Morris's son, Paul, said: "My mother never did
like Judge Newt, because anything Judge wanted to do, my dad would do it.
Daddy did all the work, and Judge got all the money."

In any last analysis, Haney and Black Newt's late-in-life recognitions
hardly amounted to admissions of wrongdoing. For a couple of others, how-
ever, there was genuine remorse. "Fred Morris agonized over it for years,"
recalled Bill Kinney, speaking of the lawyer and Boy Scout leader who'd
done so much to legitimize the plot. "He had it on his conscience until the
day he died." While clearing out Morris's desk following his death, Luther
Hames found one of the famous photographs of Frank's body hanging at
Frey's Gin. "I told Fred's widow that I wanted it," the judge remembered
years afterward. "But she wouldn't let me have it. She tore it into a thou-
sand pieces. She said, 'This has caused us enough grief.' " If possible, Luther
Burton, the young man who'd served as muscle on the trip to Milledgeville,
felt even deeper regret. Though massive in size and rough in appearance,
Burton, who for much of his adult life ran a coal yard, was generous of
spirit. "When I grew up," recalled Moultrie Sessions's daughter, Lucille, "if
you were late paying for the coal, it didn't matter." During the Depression,
added another old-time Mariettan, "a local shoe store went out of business,
and Luther went in and bought the stock for $500, then gave the shoes to
people who didn't have any." It was perfectly in character, then, that Bur-
ton, who outlived everyone else involved in the lynching, would ultimately
conclude that he'd sinned. "He was guilt-ridden about it," observed Bill
Kinney. "First, he believed he'd broken the law. Then, in taking another
man's life, he believed he'd broken God's law." In 1973, cognizant that his
days were dwindling down and convinced, in Kinney's words, that he was
"going to hell," Burton sought out Cobb County Superior Court judge
James Manning and confessed not only his part in the crime but the names
of everyone else involved and many of the conspiracy's particulars. Before
the year was out, Burton was dead.

Shortly after Burton's death, Jim Manning, who was himself getting on in
years, spent an evening with Bill Kinney. During the course of the visit, the
judge told the editor— who was a nephew of the lynch party member

626 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

Cicero Dobbs— everything that Burton had told him. Ever since boyhood,
Kinney, the community's discouragement notwithstanding, had been fasci-
nated by the Frank case. As a fledgling reporter, he'd gleaned bits and
pieces of the story. Later, through his friendship with in-laws of Lawrence
Haney, he'd been allowed to read the list of participants that the old farmer
had secreted in the family Bible. The revelations Manning passed on all but
completed the picture. As much as anyone could know what had happened
at Frey's Gin, Kinney now knew. Yet this dark truth, far from setting the
editor free, engendered a kind of paralysis. As he later phrased it: "I have a
delicate situation." What Kinney meant is that nearly 90 years after Frank's
demise, he found himself in possession of information that, no matter how
newsworthy, would shock and sadden a generation that by and large had
grown up in ignorance of its predecessors' responsibility for an awful deed.
Everywhere the editor looked, he saw them. Walking across the square was
"Coon" Shaw's son. Enjoying a drink at the country club was Governor
Joseph Brown's grandson. It was all so intimate. Moreover, the children had
inherited the earth. John Ibcker Dorsey's son, Jasper, became chief execu-
tive officer of Southern Bell Telephone. General Lucius Clay, Herbert's
younger brother, was military governor of Germany following World War
II, in which role he oversaw the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals,
signing the death warrants of Hermann Goering, Martin Bormann and the
others convicted of atrocities. (According to Herbert Jr., who also served in
Berlin, Lucius Clay knew of his sibling's role in the Frank lynching, but it
did not affect his judgments.) The lawyer Chuck Clay, Herbert's nephew,
was for many years chairman of Georgia's Republican Party. And Bolan
and Jim Brumby's second cousin Otis Jr. was publisher of the Marietta Jour-
rial. For Kinney, this last fact loomed largest. "I will never be able to write
honestly about the lynching, because I have to live with these people," he
said one morning in the 1990s. "I can't take the Brumbys' money for all
these years, then stab them in the back." Other than the occasional veiled
reference to this conspirator or that in the editor's widely read Saturday
column, there would be no cleaning of the slate. The silence continued.

With the curtains of fog and iron already tightly drawn in Georgia by the
1920s, the Atlanta Lucille Frank returned to from Memphis six years after
the lynching seemed, at least on the surface, tranquil and settled. The old
hostilities were hidden away, so much so that when the 33-year-old widow
took a job at the glove counter her brother-in-law managed at that bastion
of female sophistication, J. P. Allen, she would regularly wait on the wives
and children of various of the lynching brethren — she unaware of their con-
nection to her husband's death and they unaware, too. Recalled Lucille

RECESSIONAL 627

Morris Suhr, the daughter of Judge Newt Morris, who became a frequent
customer: "She was charming and nice. I felt so sorry for her."

Living at first with her sister, Rosalind, and her husband, Charles Ursen-
bach, in a house in the old Washington Street neighborhood and then, mid-
way through the decade, moving— as so many in Atlanta's German- Jewish
community at the time did— to fashionable Druid Hills, Lucille Frank, at
least in appearance, had reclaimed her place in life. Always well dressed
(although usually in black) and now wearing distinctive horn-rimmed
glasses, she played bridge almost every weekend with a tight group of
matrons of the approximate same age. At home, she read literature and his-
tory, listened to the Saturday-afternoon radio broadcasts of the New York
Metropolitan Opera and kept up a friendly competition regarding word
derivations with her teenage nephew Harold Marcus. "She and Harold
were always trying to stump each other," remembered Harold's younger
brother, Alan.

Yet the outward display of poise and grace notwithstanding, Lucille 's
emotional state was more fragile than in the crime's aftermath. "She was a
problem, a burden," recalled Alan Marcus. Added Alan's wife, Fanny: "She
was always looking for an argument. She was antagonistic. You'd go right,
she'd say left. She wanted love, but she did not know how to give."

Conversation regarding the source of Lucille's suffering was verboten.
If the topic of Leo's death came up, she responded with uncontrollable
emotion. "When you mentioned Marietta— just name it— she boiled,"
Alan Marcus remembered. "She would say, 'I just don't talk about it.' " And
worse than the anger were the tears. In the 1940s, when the news broke that
Arthur Powell believed he could establish Frank's innocence, the Constitu-
tion sent a young reporter named Celestine Sibley to see Lucille. "When I
told her what I wanted, she just started crying," Sibley remembered some
50 years later.

For the most part, the family shielded Lucille from painful reminders of
her great tragedy, a task made easier by the care and wealth of the widow's
brother-in-law, Charles Ursenbach. Upon his wife's death, Ursenbach moved
himself and Lucille into the luxurious Briarcliff Hotel on Ponce de Leon
Avenue in Northeast Atlanta. Soon, Lucille was able to quit her job at J. P.
Allen and enjoy the use of a four-door La Salle sedan in which Ursenbach's
Negro driver chauffeured her to her bridge games and other appointments.

Ultimately, all the whispering and the tiptoeing around the truth forced
Lucille more deeply into a shell. "Lucille was an extremely depressed per-
son," remembered Dr. James Kauffman, an internist who began treating
her in 1952. "There were psychiatrists, of course, but she wouldn't agree to
see one." Instead, she brought her problems to Kauffman. "I saw her many
times," he recalled. "She somatized her complaints. She had chest pains,

628 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

headaches. When I think of her, I think of depression." At that, Kauffman
paused, then added: "Leo may have been killed, but she served a life sen-
tence."

By the mid-1950s, Lucille was living at the Howell House, one of At-
lanta's first air-conditioned apartment buildings. Now in her mid-6os, her
illnesses were no longer only in her mind. Suffering from hardening of the
arteries, she spent her days walking gingerly from her unit, where she grew
lilies and violets on the balcony, to the lobby, where she whiled away long
afternoons talking with other tenants. Much thinner than during her twen-
ties ("Her doctor told her she had a beautiful body," recalled Fanny Marcus.
"She needed to hear that. She'd never been complimented enough"), she
was a woman with a sad half smile and bitter memories. "To sum up her
being," declared Alan Marcus, "she was pretty, strong, hurt." Lucille died on
April 23, 1957, from heart disease. When Alan and Fanny cleaned out her
bedroom, they found photographs of both Leo and his grave, the wedding
ring that the lynchers had returned and, said Fanny, "a lot of letters written
to Leo long after his demise."

Lucille's funeral was held at Atlanta's Patterson Funeral Home, after
which her body, as she had requested, was cremated. It was her wish that
her ashes be scattered in a public park, but a city ordinance forbade the
practice, so the small box containing them was stored on a back shelf at the
mortuary, where it was all but forgotten.

The years following Lucille's death marked another uneasy period
for Atlanta's Jewish community. The trouble started on October 12, 1958,
when the Temple— recently moved to an imposing Palladian structure on
a mansion-lined section of north Peachtree Street— was badly damaged in
a racist bombing. Arrests were eventually made, but the defendants— one
of whom was represented by James Venable, who'd grown up to become
not only the Klan's imperial wizard but a well-known lawyer— were acquit-
ted. For the graying sons and daughters of Israel who'd lived through the
Frank affair, it all seemed frightfully familiar. Thus it was that when an offi-
cial from Patterson's called the Marcuses in either late 1962 or early 1963
and told them that they needed to make a decision regarding the disposi-
tion of Lucille's ashes, they panicked. The last thing they wanted was any
sort of public ceremony that might expose the community to scrutiny or
attack. After retrieving the box containing his aunt's remains, Alan placed it
in the front trunk of his sporty red Corvair Manza and once more tried to
forget. "I rode those ashes around in the car for six months," he remem-
bered. Finally, in the predawn grayness of a morning in mid- 1964, Alan
picked up his brother and drove downtown to Oakland Cemetery, passing
through its somber gates and over its tree-shaded alleys until he reached
the Jewish section. There, kneeling on the moist grass and using garden

RECESSIONAL 629

tools, the two dug a grave between the stones topping the resting places of
Lucille's parents, Emil and Josephine Cohen Selig. The Marcuses worked
quietly and quickly, careful not to draw attention to themselves. Though the
sky all around them was fingered by glass and steel skyscrapers— evidence
that in the conflict that had claimed Leo Frank, it was the future that was
now ascendant— they were oblivious. Following a brief prayer, the men set
the box containing Lucille's ashes in the hole, replaced the sod and drove
away, leaving this Georgia girl among her people, unmarked but not alone.

TWENTY-FOUR

i arly one morning in the fall of 1948, William Smith walked into
the clerk's office of the Fulton County Courthouse in downtown
^ Atlanta and picked up certified copies of a number of records per-
taining to his representation of Jim Conley three and a half decades before.
Then the 69-year-old lawyer strolled north through a city that in many ways
bore as little resemblance to the hustling state capital of 1913 as he bore
to the ramrod-straight young man who in those days had practiced here.
Bursting with veterans just back from World War II and awash in new
money, Atlanta was poised for the great boom that would finally transform
it into a modern metropolis. Smith, meanwhile, had aged markedly. Shoul-
ders stooped and hair a flinty gray, he was a figure from the rapidly receding
past. More worrisome, over the last several months he'd experienced health
problems that had started with fatigue and blurred vision and progressed
inexplicably and, for someone who'd so prided himself on his rhetorical
ability, maddeningly to a paralysis of the vocal cords. The lawyer's doctor
believed he'd suffered a series of small strokes, but whatever it was, it had
filled him with a heightened sense of urgency. As he'd recently told his son
Walter, in one of the notes penciled in capital letters that now served as his
sole form of verbal communication: "life and lifetime are of much

VALUE, FAR BEYOND OUR CONSIDERATION."

Accordingly, once Smith reached the Carnegie Library just off Peach tree
Street, he quickly got down to work on what was only the latest of several
ambitious projects— a memoir of his involvement in the Leo Frank case.
With bound volumes of the Atlanta newspapers from the summer of the
trial before him and the documents he'd just obtained at the courthouse
tucked into his brief case, the lawyer let his mind drift back to his first deal-
ings with the Negro whose testimony had convicted the factory superin-
tendent and around whom his own existence had pivoted. Entering his
thoughts in a brown Montag notebook, he wrote:

MY MOVES FOR CONLEY

I. Worked with state in establishing Frank's guilt,
(a.) Then believed in Frank's guilt.

THE REVENANT 63I

(b.) It's easy to mentally swing with the tide of public thinking.

(c.) Prepared jury list.

(d.) Prepared briefs of law at trial.

(e.) Prepared Conley physically, mentally for witness stand.

(f.) Made Conley available for city police, for Pinkerton detective

and for Solicitor General,
(g.) Cultivated friendly attitude with Solicitor General and Police

and Pinkerton.
(h.) Barred everyone else from access to Conley.

As these jottings indicate, Smith's ideas were still in the incubation stage.
Though he'd decided to focus on the events surrounding his shift of alle-
giance from the prosecution to the defense and while he'd picked a title—
"A Competent and Compellable Witness"— that reflected his continuing
desire to lay to rest the resulting charge that he'd betrayed his client, he had
yet to begin the necessary spadework.The transcript alone would require a
week to read. At the thought of such labor, the lawyer shut his eyes in
exhaustion. He would get back to it, he told himself, after lunch.

The dining room of the Piedmont Hotel was a place where the Old South
met the New, where politicians from outlying towns mingled easily with
salesmen from national manufacturing concerns. Smith felt comfortable
here. So much so that after his meal, he settled into an overstuffed chair
in the lobby and watched the comings and goings of the diverse clientele,
an occupation that he could enjoy all afternoon. In fact, when a former
acquaintance sat down beside the lawyer and failed to recognize him, he
decided to have a few laughs. He started by passing the man a note asking if
he was "a Davis." Subsequently, Smith recorded the ensuing dialogue:

HE SAID "YES." THEN I ASKED HIM IF HE WAS A RAILROAD MAN, AND HE
SAID "YES." I ASKED HIM IF HE WAS THE SON OF AN EX-SHERIFF NAMED
DAVIS. HE SAID, "YES." AFTER EACH QUESTION, HE ASKED ME WHO I WAS.
AND I WOULDN'T TELL HIM. HAD A LOT OF FUN OUT OF IT.

But notwithstanding the reviving energies that this exchange suggests, the
lawyer did not return to work, waiting instead for his son— who was now
launching his own law practice in Atlanta— to stop by and drive him to his
house in the northern suburbs. Shortly after reaching home, Walter Smith
asked his father why he hadn't gone back to the task at hand. Came the sad
but honest reply:

I'M WEAK. TO SIT IN A STRAIGHT CHAIR AT THE LIBRARY OR EVEN FOR A
SHORT TIME AT THE TABLE JUST WEARS ON THE LITTLE STRENGTH I HAVE.

632 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

For Walter Smith, his father's acknowledgment of his waning powers
only confirmed what he already knew— the book was going to be an uphill
climb. Still, it was one that the younger man believed had to be attempted.
Like so many who'd been entangled in the Frank case, William Smith was
tortured by unresolved emotions. While Walter anguished at the prospect
of watching his father struggle, he felt there was something the older man
wanted to get on paper. At the same time, there was something he wanted
from his father— an explanation, not so much for the decisions of 35 years
earlier but for the effects those decisions had on both the man who made
them and the people who loved him.

Though the Frank case— in the form of notecards William and Mary Lou
had used during their painstaking 1914 study of the murder notes, a dog-
eared copy of the Brief of Evidence and even a few letters from the factory
superintendent— had always been a presence in the Smiths' Staten Island
home in the 1920s and 1930s, it was rarely a topic of conversation. In a busy
house where both parents were embarking on new lives while simultane-
ously raising three children, too much else was happening to dwell on
events that with every passing year seemed more remote.

Once settled on Mountain View Avenue, Smith and Mary Lou had
set out to remake themselves. For Smith, the goal was to gain true profi-
ciency in real estate law. All those battles in the criminal courts of Atlanta
had not prepared him for clause-and-codicil-riddled rental agreements,
zoning regulations and quit-claim deeds. Hence after putting in a long day
at McLaughlin & Stern, he would spend his evenings at home studying—
and taking care of the children. Beginning in 1922, Mary Lou was con-
tinually enrolled in night school. First, she earned a bachelor's degree in
English at New York University, then a master's degree in English at the
same institution, whereupon she migrated uptown to Columbia. There, she
obtained her master's in education. By the late 1920s, she was teaching
English at Staten Island's Tottenville High School.

Given the demands of work and family, neither husband nor wife had
much time for outside pursuits. Still, there were off days, and when they
came, Smith devoted himself to two long-standing interests. For one, the
lawyer spoke frequently at temperance meetings. After years of eschewing
drink, he not surprisingly viewed the passage of the Eighteenth Amend-
ment in 191 9 as a moral victory.

During this same period, Smith also took to the hustings to promote his
other great cause— social and legal equality for American Negroes. As the
featured speaker at the 1924 Fourth of July celebration held by his neigh-
borhood association— the Westerleigh Improvement Society— Smith, after

THE REVENANT 633

indulging in the expected flourishes about America's many freedoms, went
off, as was his wont, in an altogether unexpected direction, telling the hot-
dog-and-hamburger-sated audience:

We boast of our freedom, we boast of our constitutional guarantees to
every man, regardless of race, color or previous conditions of servitude, yet
we must admit that the Black American is forced to appeal to our National
Government for protection, for even his very life, and against the moboc-
racy of White Americans, who set up stakes upon which to burn him or
who take his life at the end of a lyncher's rope.

State Governments, administered by White Americans, are power-
less or unwilling to protect him . . . We find that oath-bound, sometimes
hooded and masked organizations exist, raising the flaming cross of Christ
as the banner of racial hatred. Our officers of the law have failed in the dis-
charge of their duties in the face of these hooded bigots; our juries, sworn
to deal out justice to murderers, have forsworn their oaths at the demand
of these masked assassins.

As a Southern man, the son of a Confederate soldier, I say that the
Black Man in America is here to stay. His standards of life, he is elevating;
his children, he is educating; his voice he is making heard in every profes-
sion and calling; his wisdom, he is contributing even to the councils of the
nation. Now, through the courage of our people, Black and White Ameri-
cans can and must move forward, hand in hand, as brothers.

As had been the case back in Georgia, Smith did not limit his activities in
behalf of Negroes to mere words. Shortly after his Westerleigh speech, he
went to Brooklyn to see the Reverend Henry Hugh Proctor, now the pastor
of the Nazarene Congregational Church. The two had much to discuss— old
times in Atlanta, their mutual acquaintance Jim Conley — but the main pur-
pose of the lawyer's visit was to invite his friend to become the first black
clergyman to address his Staten Island church. Proctor accepted. Mean-
time, Smith also tried to knock down a higher racial barrier. Responding
to a membership invitation from American Bar Association president
Charles A. Boston, he wrote:

It would be a pleasure for me to sign this application and forward same
as requested, and I would be delighted to be a member of the American
Bar Association, but for the fact, very clearly indicated upon the form of
application which you wish me to sign, that Association membership is
based upon a discrimination . . . both because of color and of race, and that
my signing such an application would be an implied agreement on my part
to accept membership on such basis.

634 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

As a native-born American, a white man, a Southerner by birth and
rearing, and a member of the Sons of the Confederacy, I believe that the
day has passed in this land when so distinguished an association as the
National Brotherhood of Lawyers can honorably yield to any discrimina-
tion upon which the Constitution and Laws of our Nation have placed a no
uncertain ban and as to which the racial facts of professional life in Amer-
ica demonstrate its lack of justification . . .

While I appreciate greatly your personal courtesy indicated in your
offer to endorse my application for membership in the Association, I must
deny myself the privilege . . .

The day is coming when I will be able to avail myself of your kind offer
to endorse my application. That day is not far distant. It will be when the
American Bar Association makes personal and professional character, not
race and color, its sole qualification for membership. That day cannot be
long delayed. We have traveled too far onward and upward toward higher
things for it to be otherwise decreed.

Smith's willingness to go against the grain regardless of political or pro-
fessional considerations remained, in short, as strong as ever. There was,
however, one matter on which he continued to censor himself during this
period— the Frank case. Not that he didn't come close to addressing it. In
the spring of 1929, Liberty— the self-proclaimed "Weekly for Everybody,"
whose mixture of sensationalistic journalism, celebrity profiles and hard-
boiled fiction made it a worthy rival to the Saturday Evening Post— invited
readers to submit solutions to any of ten real-life mysteries, among them
the murder of Mary Phagan. The prize: publication in the magazine and a
$500 payment. For Smith, the contest was tantalizing. Here was a chance
not just to lay out the case against Jim Conley before a national audience
but to justify his own much debated conduct. Yet with the opportunity came
risks. Old hostilities could be reignited, while such friends as Hugh Dorsey,
who despite all that had passed between them had written a letter of rec-
ommendation to the New York bar when Smith resumed practice, could be
hurt. After much agonizing, the lawyer embarked on what appeared to be a
safe course of action, penning his theory of the crime in his daughter's
voice, then submitting the resulting 12-page manuscript under her byline. In
its way, the idea was inspired. As a girl, young Mary Lou, now a senior at
Barnard College, had, of course, been at her parents' side as they conducted
their reinvestigation in the summer of 1914. "I can recall, as if it was yester-
day, the trip my father and mother made with me and my older brother
through the pencil factory in an effort to test Conley's story in the light of
the physical facts found at the scene of the crime," Smith had her recollect.
"I rode on the elevator into that dark basement of death." Such passages

THE REVENANT 635

provided the perfect hook for a compelling account of everything from
Smith's findings regarding the authorship of the murder notes to Dorsey's
failure to inform either the defense or the jury that the hair taken from lit-
tle Mary's head during the autopsies did not match that found on the plant
lathe where the prosecution argued that she'd been killed. In fact, the
resulting piece was so well crafted that it won the Liberty competition. At
which point its true author became apprehensive. Along with his initial con-
cerns about the potential negative impacts were new ones about the fitness
of using his daughter as a front to discuss what was still a controversial sub-
ject. Which was why at the eleventh hour, Smith had Mary Lou withdraw
the article. Later, and in his own name, he assured himself, he would do
something with the material.

During the 1930s, as the Great Depression clamped down, Smith and his
wife pushed themselves hard. Mary Lou rose rapidly in the New York City
school system, by mid-decade becoming head of the McKee Vocational
High School English department. Meanwhile, Smith was eventually ele-
vated to a partnership at McLaughlin & Stern, and— thanks to the lobbying
of his partner Martin Lippman— found himself frequently back in the
courtroom. As Lippman, in a note to one of the firm's clients, put it:

I believe that Mr. Smith, if permitted to sum up this case, would without
doubt satisfy the jury that we are right ... I do not care how eloquent or
convincing Mr. Shapiro [opposing counsel] is, I say that he is no match for
Smith in summation. I say, without hesitation, that if I were in your position
(and I regard myself as a pretty fair trial lawyer), I would unhesitatingly
permit Smith to sum up this case in preference to myself. He is a born ora-
tor, he knows and understands this situation very keenly, it lives and throbs
in him, and I am satisfied that he can make the jury feel just as he does.

Though not everyone at the firm was so sanguine about the lawyer ("He
was a dreamer, not a rainmaker," partner Frederick Ballen later recalled),
Smith used the connections that resulted from his newfound status to ben-
efit financially, buying control of a bond issue for a hotel and real estate
development. Thanks to the reviving economy of the early 1940s, the sale
was a success, earning him a handsome commission. After years of struggle,
he was well fixed.

With his bank account flush, Smith could have eased into retirement. He
and Mary Lou had not only survived a terrible ordeal, but they had pros-
pered. And the children seemed headed toward productive lives. Their
oldest son, Frank, was enrolled in premed at the University of Southern

636 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

California and fronting a swing band— Frank Smith's Rajahs of Rhythm.
Their daughter, Mary Lou, was pursuing a law degree at the Brooklyn Law
School. Walter was preparing to enter Duke University.

Yet despite how much there was for Smith to revel in, despite his vows to
live in the future, there was something profoundly unsettled in him, some
nagging anxiety stemming from his actions in the Frank case. This anxiety,
wed to the lawyer's lifelong inclination to take on worthy causes, would give
birth to a grandiose dream.

Walter Smith first heard of his father's plan to move the family back to the
South when he was a senior at Duke. During a visit, the older man spoke of
how much he missed the region, then articulated an ambitious plan in
which he wanted his son's assistance. The goal: to start a free school for
impoverished Appalachian children in the lovely little town of Dahlonega,
where nearly half a century before Smith had attended North Georgia Col-
lege. As the lawyer saw it, the institution would provide its students with
both a solid educational foundation and the military discipline he'd valued
as a boy. In a nod to this last purpose, he'd already decided upon a name—
the Fort Smith Academy.

For Walter Smith, who, unlike his father, was a skeptical sort and, more-
over, enjoyed an occasional snort of bourbon, the prospect of devoting his
life to good works, of turning his back on the things of this world before
he'd experienced them, could not have been less appealing. While he never
flatly rejected the offer, he took refuge first at Columbia University, where
he earned his master's degree in English, then at the Atlanta Journal, where
he worked as a reporter, and finally, at the onset of World War II, in the
United States Navy.

In spite of Walter's resistance— indeed, in spite of the resistance of all the
children— William Smith made a good start of it. The site of approximately
700 acres, which he acquired parcel by parcel over a period of several years
in the late 1930s and early 1940s, was surpassingly beautiful. Nestled in the
Yahoola valley nine miles north of Dahlonega, the land had once been
home to a Cherokee princess, Trahlyta, who was buried nearby. Redbuds,
dogwoods and pines marched up the gentle mountain slopes, while a creek
wandered through the emerald bottoms. Rhododendrons were every-
where. On summer evenings, a blue mist settled upon the horizon. In win-
ter, the air was crisply clear, with an occasional spray of snow.

At the same time that Smith was putting together the Fort Smith prop-
erty, he was using his New York law office to raise funds and solicit supplies.
From some quarters, the responses were positive. One of Smith's partners
pledged $5,000, an in-law who worked at the publishing house of Macmil-

THE REVENANT 637

Ian & Company provided 3,000 books, and Axel Sturdel, formerly the trum-
pet player in Frank Smith's band and by this point Tommy Dorsey's
arranger, also sent a check. Others, however, were less receptive. John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., whom the lawyer ran into in Manhattan one day, brushed
him off. Same thing with Borden Dairies, which answered a 1944 request by
Smith for a calf from Elsie for the school's working farm by informing him
that the trademark milk cow's offspring were pledged to the war effort.

Still and all, Smith was optimistic. So much so that shortly after he and
Mary Lou moved to Dahlonega in the fall of 1944, he upped the ante by
purchasing two of the town's most fabled institutions. Situated just off the
courthouse square, the Smith House (the founder was no relation to the
new owner) was known throughout the South for both its rustic mountain
rooms and its "family style" meals, where patrons sat together at long
wooden tables piled high with bowls of collards, black-eyed peas, okra,
green beans, sweet potatoes, corn bread and, even in bad times, never fewer
than three meats. Just around the corner from this landmark in a barnlike
frame building whose front door was arched by luxuriant honeysuckle
vines stood the offices of the lawyer's other acquisition— the Dahlonega
Nugget, circulation 840. Despite its limited press run, the newspaper, which
took its name from a gold strike that had occurred in the town in the early
1800s, exerted an outsize influence. Its former editor, J. B. Townsend, was a
favorite of that avid student of the American language H. L. Mencken, who
frequently reprinted his homespun editorials in the pages of the American
Mercury. Townsend 's brother— known simply as Uncle Goley— remained
on staff as publisher emeritus and, more critical for a sheet whose type was
still set by hand, compositor.

Smith had bought in to the heart of Dahlonega, and he'd done so
because the Fort Smith Academy was only part of his dream. At the Smith
House, he hoped to re-create the graciousness with which he'd been raised.
In the Nugget, he would expound on his notions of communitas and civitas.
And if one day the locals began referring to him in the old style as "the
Colonel," he would take it not so much as his due but as a sign that after all
the years away, he'd been welcomed home.

Initially, everything went well for Smith and Mary Lou in Dahlonega.
Early each morning, they drove the nine miles from their temporary quar-
ters at the Smith House to the Fort Smith compound to supervise construc-
tion. The first building to go up was a small but sturdy one-room building
reminiscent of a country schoolhouse that would function as the school's
library. Once the roof was on and the shelves were in place, Mary Lou spent
hours there creating a card catalog for what had become a sizable and
varied collection of books. To the inside front binding of each volume,
she affixed a bookplate that contained the Fort Smith Academy's Latin

638 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

motto— Non Sibi SedAliis, Not for Ourselves but for Others. It was by this
philosophy that she and her husband intended to live out their days. Next
came the headmaster's residence, where the couple would live. A handsome
frame structure with gabled eaves, a stone chimney and a roomy front
porch, it sat on a terraced shelf of land looking down on the prospective
location of the campus.

Late afternoons found the Smiths back in Dahlonega at the Nugget's tiny
office. When not helping Uncle Goley set type for such hot items as the
dates of upcoming revival meetings, get-well wishes to ailing citizens and
tips on proper crop rotation, Smith wrote the weekly editorial, which ran at
the top of page 2. From the outset, it was clear that North Georgia journal-
ism would no longer speak in the folksy voice of J. B. Townsend. In the ini-
tial leader, which appeared on January 19, 1945, the new editor wrote:

We believe that we have a well-behaved, hard working and appreciated
Negro citizenry. We shall advocate for them and for improvement in their
living, working and civic conditions and of educational operations for their
children.

Save for this mildly shocking assertion, there was little else in Smith's inau-
gural utterances to worry the homefolks. Coming out foursquare for "our
churches, our college, our schools, our lodges and all of our uplifting institu-
tions" was hardly revolutionary. Smith's New York background aside, most
Dahlonegans welcomed both the messenger and the message. And besides,
they reminded themselves, the newcomer was a wealthy man. Not only was
he in a position to enrich them through work at Fort Smith or at his other
businesses, but rumor had it that in the tradition of a benevolent southern
squire, he was already proving a soft touch for humble townspeople with
aspirations of their own. Little wonder that after just a few weeks, the city
council asked Smith to serve as city attorney. It would be an honor, he
replied.

Inevitably, Smith's honeymoon ended. However, it did so not because of
the Nuggefs editorials regarding Dahlonega's black populace or some
other far-reaching issue but because of those that addressed a topic that
mattered even more in the town— pigs and chickens. As it happened, the
winter of 1945 found Dahlonega in an uproar regarding a referendum set
for March 30 that would determine whether homeowners could continue to
keep swine in their yards and operate commercial chicken houses in resi-
dential neighborhoods. In a February 23 broadside headlined moving for-
ward, Smith jumped in on the side of the reformers. "Did you ever see a

THE REVENANT 639

clean hog pen?" he asked. "At their best, they are bound to be centers of
filth, stench, of fly breeding and of rat feeding. Our hog-raising citizens are
certainly maintaining dangerous menaces to public and private health." As
for the chicken houses, Smith declared: "Our citizens simply object to the
construction of these unsightly structures, the increased fire risk, the noises
and odors. Every home in their vicinity is depreciated in value. We have
reliable information that other such structures are soon to be erected in our
city. A few men, no matter how excellent citizens they may be, should not
enjoy privileges so destructive of the health, happiness and comfort of our
citizens generally."

Not surprisingly, numerous Dahlonegans disagreed with Smith. In fact,
the negative response to the Nuggefs anti-urban-livestock editorial was
so great that the paper introduced a new column called both sides for
the sole purpose of handling protests and complaints. Yet Smith was not
deterred. In the weeks leading up to the referendum, he hammered away,
presenting information establishing the relationship of animal waste to the
spread of typhus and discussing the negative economic impact an outbreak
of the disease would have on the town. His solution: Move the offending
operations to specifically zoned locales where they would have minimal
effect on the physical well-being of the human population. "We do not
desire to run the town," he concluded. "We are perfectly willing that the
voters run the town. It just so happens we are the present owners of the
Nugget [and] we are charged with the duty and responsibility as newspaper
folks of presenting facts."

On the appointed date, Dahlonegans went to the polls where, in what the
Nugget termed "an orderly and well-managed election," the referendum
passed by a substantial majority. The crusading editor had won his first bat-
tle. But in the process, he had lost the war. At its April 6 meeting, the city
council fired Smith as city attorney. Moreover, several of the town's leading
lights— men who just a few months earlier had enthusiastically greeted the
newcomer— began to disparage him to others of their station. Recalled
longtime Dahlonega resident Frances Jones: "John Moore was a prominent
citizen, and he kept cows in his yard a block from the square and [Smith's
editorials] made him mad. And he had a lot of friends." Never one to back
down, Smith reacted to his dismissal as city attorney by terming it "a baby
act." As for those who were speaking out against him, they were just "vent-
ing personal spleen." Beneath the public bravado, however, Smith was
deeply wounded, not so much by the nasty squabble itself but by the fact
that it revealed that his fantasy of an idyll in the Georgia mountains where
after so many years in exile he could live among his own people in harmony
and understanding was exactly that— a fantasy. Just a few months later, he
sold the Nugget to Frances Jones. Then, on March 15, 1946, he divested him-

64O AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

self of his other in-town property. In its article announcing the Smith
House's sale, the Nugget reported: "Mr. Smith plans to continue with his
school project for underprivileged children, Fort Smith. Fort Smith's goal is
to give a complete education, including college, to the children placed
there."

And so several of Smith's illusions had been swept away, but his greatest
aspiration abided, and all through 1946 and 1947, he fought to see it real-
ized. One morning a week, he worked out of an office in Dahlonega.
Recalled Nell Young, who served as his secretary: "He wrote letters to
donors, wealthy people, saying he was going to build the school." The rest of
Smith's time was spent at Fort Smith. There, a crew of laborers recruited
from the neighboring hollows constructed a sawmill. Once the mill was up
and running, Smith supervised the harvesting of trees from the surrounding
woodlands. Within a few weeks, 40,000 board feet of lumber stood piled
beside the dirt road that ran through the place. Sitting on his porch at night
with Mary Lou, the would-be educator could close his eyes and almost see
the school: committed teachers, yearning students and maybe someday his
own grandchildren, all here in this pristine setting, seeking after knowledge.

Sometime during the first few months of 1948, Walter Smith, back from the
war and finishing law school in Atlanta, perceived all at once what his father
did not— there would never be a Fort Smith Academy. In fact, save for the
headmaster's house and the library building, none of it would ever get off
the ground. In one of those shattering moments where a child abandons his
illusions and looks at a parent in all of his human fallibility, Walter Smith
looked at William Smith and realized:

He was an old man obsessed with a dream he couldn't accomplish. He'd
become so devoted to this that he'd lost all sight of reality. He'd spread the
word around that he had all these plans— he told everyone he would do it.
They thought he was a millionaire. In truth, he didn't have the money to
pull it off. It was, I hate to say it, pathetic.

By Walter's estimate, his father had sunk over $100,000 into his dream, most
of it tied up in the land and some, bearing out the scuttlebutt around
Dahlonega, loaned for a song to poor bets. No money was coming in from
investments and none from donors. Yet even had the financial picture been
rosier, the prospects still would have been hopeless, for almost overnight
Smith had grown ill. Exhaustion, eyestrain, aches. Soon would come the loss
of voice. Recalled Walter: "He was mentally sharp, but he had no strength.
He was a sick man."

THE REVENANT 64I

Walter's assessment of his father's situation was harsh but realistic, yet it
was not unsympathetic, for he knew that the dream of Fort Smith was
rooted in the central scarring drama of the older man's life— the Leo Frank
case. Through all the years, William Smith had carried a never-ending bur-
den of guilt regarding both the fatal consequences of his actions at the start
of the affair and the personal costs of his actions at its conclusion. Even
three and a half decades later, he shuddered that he had not seen through
Jim Conley. Which was one of the reasons, his son believed, why he'd under-
taken an impossible task. As Walter observed: "Dad was trying to make
amends for what he felt was the worst mistake of his life— getting sucked in
by this liar." Yet there was another element as well. Though William Smith
never regretted changing loyalties in the midst of the fight, believing that
he'd not only acted in good conscience but had completed his obligations to
his client, he did regret the impact that change had on himself and his fam-
ily. For all practical purposes, they had been driven into the wilderness,
forced to leave their beloved South. Even as a young man, Smith had, of
course, stood apart in the region. Yet Georgia had made him. He was as
much alumnus as tramp. And like so many native sons, he'd wanted the
same for his sons and daughter. Remembered his youngest: "Much of the
dream for the school grew out of his hopes for us. He thought we'd be
together."

Walter Smith's understanding of all of this ultimately prompted him to
urge his father to find a new purpose. Psychologically, the Fort Smith Acad-
emy, no matter how noble in concept, represented a monumental skirting of
the actual issue. On the other hand, a book on the Leo Frank case— one
that not only told the story of a husband and wife working together to exon-
erate a condemned man but related the consequences those efforts inflicted
on themselves and their family— might lead somewhere. Such a work could
be the ailing man's gift to himself and his children.

Thus it was that at least a couple of times a month during the summer
and fall of 1948, William Smith would make the trip from Dahlonega to
Atlanta, spending the days downtown at the courthouse or in the library,
while bunking at night with Walter. Despite his mysterious illness, he threw
himself into "A Competent and Compellable Witness." This, finally, was
what he was meant to do, and he'd long known it. In fact, in a 1944 letter to
former governor John Slaton, with whom he'd kept in touch, Smith had
declared:

Some day it may be that I shall commit to writing in a more or less per-
manent form the complete story of this unfortunate matter, insofar as the
facts may then be within my grasp. My intimate knowledge and relation-
ship to the entire matter somewhat places me under a duty and a responsi-

642 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

bility. I feel that I am duty-bound to make a careful and comprehensive
contribution to the vindication of the memory of Mr. Frank . . . Any such
effort should be very thoroughly presented. My contribution to this end, I
feel sure, would be read with the deepest interest and with rare apprecia-
tion by our thinking fellow Georgians. It may be that I shall be spared long
enough to discharge this duty.

In the end, however, Smith would not be spared. Though he did get a few
words on paper, they displayed neither the incisiveness of the 100-page
study of the murder notes he'd prepared 34 years before nor the dramatic
intensity of the article he'd penned under his daughter's byline 14 years
later for Liberty. "Mr. Frank's lead counsel was Luther Z. Rosser," he wrote
in a typical passage. "He asked no favors. He gave no quarter. He battled
everybody in his way. He was the 'knock down and drag out' type. It is my
humble judgement that if Mr. Reuben R. Arnold, who was later retained,
had first gone to the police station, Mr. Frank would never have been
charged." It was all like that. Not that this was so surprising. By late autumn
of 1948, Smith's condition had deteriorated. The final diagnosis was amy-
otrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease. Paralysis of the vocal cords
is a not uncommon symptom.

On a frigid morning in February 1949, William Smith departed the Fort
Smith property for the last time. Up the unpaved lane, past the pile of ice-
rimed lumber— which two years after it had been cut still stood on the
grounds— then onto U.S. 19, he and Mary Lou rode. At the wheel of the
green Chevrolet Bel- Air was Lee Jerrard, one of the locals who'd worked
on the place. He was doing the couple another courtesy— driving them to
the hospital in Atlanta.

Down to Dahlonega, around the square, past the Smith House and the
Nugget the car sped, proceeding south through Dawsonville, Cumming and
Alpharetta. Soon the suburbs appeared, then Atlanta. Walter, who was
waiting at Crawford Long Hospital, greeted his parents with as much hope
as he could summon, but it did no good. As they waited for a nurse to com-
plete the admission forms, father turned to son and on a pad of paper wrote:
"just tell her i've come here to die." It was a fact. The paralysis had
spread to the windpipe and diaphragm.

By noon, Smith was in an oxygen tent in a private room, and calls were
going out to the other children— Frank, now practicing medicine in Port-
land, Oregon, and Mary Lou, still in New York. Through it all, the dying
man remained alert, using the time left to him to put his thoughts on paper.
Mostly, he addressed unfinished business— unpaid debts, insurance policies,

THE REVENANT 643

outstanding bills. Writing in clipped, telegraphic bursts, he pushed each
message through an open crease in the clear plastic to Walter. It went on
like this for several hours. At a certain point, however, Smith was gripped
by a larger idea. Laboriously, he printed a long sentence in block letters.
Then, with a flourish, he scrawled his signature. Walter instantly grasped the
note's importance, understood that it was at once a crystallization of the
thoughts that had been meant for the book, an offering to the family and,
because of the legal construction, an appeal to some unknown court. These
were not just last words but a final argument. They read:

IN ARTICLES OF DEATH, I BELIEVE IN THE INNOCENCE AND
GOOD CHARACTER OF LEO M. FRANK.

W. M. Smith.

Soon thereafter, Smith was dead. Several days later, he was buried in a
cemetery a mile from Fort Smith. For the next 27 years, his wife would live
on in the house overlooking the Yahoola valley. Almost until the end, she
kept the little library, the only part of the dream that had taken physical
shape, open to the public. Few patrons visited, but she did not seem to
worry. As she had learned, people could not be forced to see the truth. They
had to come to it on their own.

Epilogue

n a winter afternoon three days before Christmas 1983, 85-year-
) old Alonzo Mann walked slowly across the lawn of the Georgia
capitol in Atlanta. When he reached the statue of Tom Watson that
stands at the western entrance to the seat of government, he paused. Then
Leo Frank's former office boy —now a stooped, white-haired gent in a worn
topcoat— headed up the capitol steps. On a summer day 70 years earlier,
Mann had failed to tell the factory superintendent's trial jury what he
believed to be the truth: Frank did not murder Mary Phagan. On Saturday,
April 26, 1913, Mann had barged into the National Pencil Company lobby
and seen Jim Conley toting the girl's body.

For a lifetime, Mann had carried his secret with him. At first, he said he
was too scared to repeat it— hence his barely audible testimony during the
proceedings against Frank. When he grew older, he claimed to have told a
few people, yet they ignored him. But finally, he had found someone who
would listen. One year before this gray holiday afternoon, Mann had sat
down with lawyer John J. Hooker, a debonair financier and unsuccessful
Tennessee gubernatorial candidate, who had agreed to take his deposition.

"I opened the door to the National Pencil Company and walked in,"
Mann informed Hooker in a soft, sure voice.

"What time was that?"

"I think it was a little after 12:00. 1 looked up to the right, and there was
Jim Conley with a girl in his arms and she was limp. He looked around at
me. He couldn't reach me. He says, 'If you tell anything about this, I'll kill
you.' So I turned around and went out the door and went home."

Hooker took a deep breath. Then he began to read from an affidavit
Mann had given to the Tennessean in Nashville {Tennessean reporters Jerry
Thompson and Robert Sherborne had published the first newspaper ac-
count of Mann's story on March 7, 1982).

" 'He had the body of Mary Phagan in his arms,' " Hooker read.

"Yes, he had the body of a young lady in his arms," Mann answered.

" 'She appeared to be unconscious or perhaps dead.' "

"That's right."

EPILOGUE 645

Hooker paused. Then he asked, "Now, Mr. Mann, when you got home,
what did you tell your mother?"

"I told my mother what happened, and she says, 'Don't say anything
about it because we don't want to get involved in it.' "

Mann obeyed his mother's request. He was that terrified of Conley, and
his parents were that terrified of the hostility their son might attract if he
came forth. Now, he informed Hooker, he was obsessed by another fear: He
was afraid that he was going to carry the burden of not speaking out to
the grave.

This was the crux of Mann's statement, and it became the foundation
for an application for a posthumous pardon for Frank filed by Charles
Wittenstein, southern counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, and Dale
Schwartz, a fellow Atlanta lawyer. For a year, the members of the Georgia
Board of Pardons and Paroles pondered the request. Finally, on this De-
cember day, they had reached a decision.

The reopening of the Frank case prompted not only local and national
headlines (give leo frank a deserved pardon, declared the Constitu-
tion), but an NBC television movie starring Jack Lemmon in the role of
a courageous John Slaton. (The film ignored the inconvenient fact of the
governor's partnership with Luther Rosser.) The development also resur-
rected long-submerged hostilities between the descendants of key figures
in the affair. Joining in vociferous opposition to a pardon were Harvard-
educated lawyer Tom Watson Brown, the populist's great-grandson; Hugh
Dorsey, Jr.; Jasper Dorsey, son of lynching planner John Hicker Dorsey;
and Mary Phagan Kean, niece and namesake of the victim. As a conse-
quence, the Board of Pardons and Paroles deliberated in an atmosphere
that echoed the one in which the various courts had labored seven decades
before.

There were also other parallels, chief among them the murkiness of the
evidence, which over time had not surprisingly grown even more impene-
trable. Dramatic as Alonzo Mann's late-in-life assertions were, they added
little of probative value. Both the prosecution and the defense had all along
agreed that Conley carried Mary Phagan 's body, the difference being that
Hugh Dorsey maintained he had done so in the role of accomplice, while
Rosser and Reuben Arnold countered that he was the principal. True,
Mann's story, by placing Conley in the factory lobby, did give the lie to the
Negro's contention that he'd used the elevator to transport the remains, but
far from being a revelation, this assertion merely corroborated what the so-
called shit in the shaft had indicated a lifetime before. In other words, the

646 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

central riddles remained unresolved, and any opportunity to cast new light
on them was negligible.

Most daunting, Jim Conley's final whereabouts were unknown— not that
there hadn't been sightings. By the early 1930s, after serving half of his
20-year sentence for armed robbery, the Ebony Chevalier of Darktown had
returned home. In 1933, Elmer R. Gould, a 20-year-old Clark College stu-
dent, stopped at the Capital City Laundry on Mitchell Street to apply for
work. "I saw a man transporting clothes out of a truck," recalled Gould.
"I asked him if he had a job. And he said, 'What's yer name?' And I said,
'Elmer.' And he said, 'See da boss, El-more.' He was always stretching
everything out. That was Jim Conley." Gould was employed to sweep up in
the afternoons, and thus began a relationship that lasted for seven years.
During this time, as Gould moved on to pursue a master's degree at Atlanta
University, he worked regularly with Conley, becoming familiar enough
with him to know that while he was living with Mary— the woman he'd
married when both of them were hauled into court shortly after Frank's
lynching— he'd taken back up with Lorena Jones, his common-law wife
from before the trial. "I got the idea that Jim was involved with a lot of
stuff," said Gould. "He would drink and carouse. He was always on the
phone to some woman explaining why he hadn't been where he was sup-
posed to be." The pattern continued at downtown's Luckie Street YMCA,
where Conley, after taking a position as head of the maintenance depart-
ment, hired Gould. "Jim had an office in the basement of the Y, a room with
a cot in it. I suspect he slept there some nights. He always left through a gate
in the basement that opened onto the alley. Things were always going on—
women, numbers running. Jim hung with a tough group. The men were all
big gamblers, and Jim carried a pistol in a holster." At no point during
Gould and Conley's acquaintance— which ended when the younger man
took a teaching position in a rural Georgia school district— did Conley ever
confess to murdering Mary Phagan. "All the time I knew Jim," remembered
Gould, "he'd tell me, 'El-more, I didn't do a thing— only guilt I had was
helpin'.' "

Another, more remarkable sighting of Conley occurred in the 1930s
when 14-year-old Anna Belle Phagan, Mary Phagan's niece, emerged from
a Bellwood grocery store to see a Negro in conversation with little Mary's
stepfather, John W. Coleman, and brother, Joshua. So surprised was Anna
Belle, Joshua's daughter, by the scene that she exclaimed, "Dad, what are
you doing with that nigger?"

Her father said, "Do you know who this is? This is Jim Conley."

"He's the one who killed Aunt Mary," she replied.

"No, I didn't have anything to do with it," asserted Conley.

With that, the group escorted the celebrated Negro to the Phagan home

EPILOGUE 647

and invited him inside for a visit. "They talked for about an hour," recalled
Anna Belle one afternoon in the late 1980s as she sat in a small apartment
overlooking the Georgia Tech campus in Northwest Atlanta, not far from
her old neighborhood. "My dad was nice to Conley. I remember Conley
saying he wanted a drink of whisky. I don't think Dad gave him one. But I
do believe he gave him a little bit of money."

The last recorded appearance by Conley took place on October 20, 1941,
when he was arraigned in police court on charges of public drunkenness
and gambling, star witness in frank case arrested here, roared
the Constitution's headline. "Conley said he had been living a quiet life," the
paper reported. "He refused to talk about the Frank case." Whereupon the
most infamous black Atlantan of his time vanished from public view. There
is no death certificate on file for Conley at the Georgia Department of Vital
Records, although in the 1970s, one of his old gambling buddies informed
Elmer Gould— by that point one of the first black instructors at suburban
Atlanta's Briarcliff High School— that Jim "had passed." Added Gould:
"Jim is probably buried in the country, some rural church. Or he could have
been given a pauper's burial. The undertaker probably got stuck with the
cost of disposing of him."

Conley's disappearance from the scene was not the only factor compli-
cating the Board of Pardon and Paroles' attempt to delve back into the
Phagan mystery. Also gone were the state's files. In 1947, an Atlanta lawyer
and writer named Allen Lumpkin Henson visited Hugh Dorsey in his office
to discuss the possibility of writing about the case. "Magazines all over the
country keep on distorting the facts," Dorsey told Henson before directing
his attention to a large cabinet packed with the documents and pieces of
physical evidence that had factored so large during the summer of 19 13.
"Every scratch of the pen, including my notes and memoranda made during
the trial" were there, the former solicitor remarked. Not long after this
meeting, Dorsey was dead. Seventeen years later, his oldest son, James,
wrote historian Leonard Dinnerstein: "During the years since my father's
death I am afraid that any old papers which he might have preserved have
been lost or destroyed." As a result, the men looking into the matter in 1983
were unable to apply the tools of contemporary forensic science to such
items as Frank's dental X rays and the photographs of the bite wounds sup-
posedly covering Mary Phagan's body. Simply put, the argument would
never move beyond that of Conley's word versus Frank's.

All of which, of course, invited renewed speculation regarding the
enduring enigma of Frank's vexing conduct in the wake of Mary Phagan's
murder and at his trial. While the Board of Pardons and Paroles was con-
sidering the posthumous pardon application, a never before circulated let-
ter written in the winter of 1 914 by the factory superintendent to a Cornell

648 AND THE DEAD SHALL RISE

classmate surfaced. In the letter, which is addressed to John Gould, a
Detroit automotive engineer, Frank makes his only known admission that
he mishandled himself during the initial months of his ordeal. "My dear
Gould," he wrote, "in April 1913, outrageous trouble overtook me like a
bolt from the blue. The charge was so preposterous that at first I treated the
matter disdainfully, it was all so foreign and far removed from my most fan-
tastic conception or thought." That concession made, Frank went on to lay
the blame for what had transpired where his supporters laid it. "The public,
so easily aroused here in the South, conceived a vicious animosity and vin-
dictive hatred toward me, aided and abetted by racial prejudice and getting
the man higher up. Discretion and intelligence was thrown to the winds and
unreasoning mob rule took its place."

Revelatory though Frank's comments to John Gould are, they fail to
address the many allegations of sexual impropriety that played such a large
role in his conviction. Could all the stories of misconduct have been fabri-
cations? Or was there some element of truth to the charges, one that while
far from making Frank a murderer haunted his conscience and compro-
mised his ability to mount the sort of righteous defense that would have
carried the day?

The missing evidence and the continuing puzzles notwithstanding,
the Board of Pardons and Paroles did possess one new source of insight—
John Slaton's commutation order. That document, which contains William
Smith's interpretations of the murder notes and Schley Howard's theories
regarding Conley's allegations of perversion, strongly suggests Frank's
innocence. Still, even when combined with Mann's statement, the informa-
tion did not justify overturning the conviction. Decreed the board:

After exhaustive review and many hours of deliberation, it is impossible to
decide conclusively the guilt or innocence of Leo M. Frank. For the board
to grant a pardon, the innocence of the subject must be shown conclusively.
In the board's opinion, this has not been shown. Therefore, the board
hereby denies the application for a posthumous pardon for Leo M. Frank.

Predictably, the adverse decision prompted editorial consternation. In
one of the more reasoned critiques, Constitution political editor Frederick
Allen, while agreeing that the evidence presented to the board was insuffi-
cient to the purpose, bemoaned the fact that the state continued to ignore
the larger issues. "By today's standards," Allen wrote, "Frank did not receive
a fair trial." The board "should have sent a strong signal that the state of
Georgia did not condone anti-Semitism."

In 1986, Charles Wittenstein and Dale Schwartz filed a second applica-
tion with the Board of Pardons and Paroles, one that rather than seeking to

EPILOGUE 649

absolve Frank of Mary Phagan's murder asked the state to admit culpabil-
ity in his demise. This time the board responded favorably, finding that
Georgia had denied the factory superintendent his constitutional rights by
failing to ensure his safety while he was incarcerated at the prison farm in
Milledgeville. Asserted the Journal: leo frank pardon decision a vic-
tory FOR ALL GEORGIANS.

Yet tragically, there will never be a resolution to the Frank case. The
underlying tensions are too great. Had the murder of Mary Phagan not
happened when it did, it would have been merely another atrocity. Yes,
there would have been headlines, and yes, there would have been anguish
and gall. But after the dead were buried and the ritual of justice enacted,
life would have resumed, and slowly the numbing years would have pro-
ceeded until only a few could remember, and even they but dimly. That
is not, though, what occurred. The ghosts still clamor to be heard and the
trial refuses to end and the sons refight their fathers' battles and like a
transfiguring scar, the events that made up the saga have grown ever more
vivid. Many swear they know why this is so, and they speak of Jews and
injustice and the vengeful magistrate— Judge Lynch— who presided at the
end. These arguments all have their merits, but they ignore the conflict that
was there to begin with, the conflict between the future and the past that
was dramatized so audaciously on April 26, 1913, the conflict that trans-
formed murder into myth.

Abbreviations for Notes

AC

Atlanta Constitution

CTrib

AChr

Augusta Chronicle

GDA

AG

Atlanta Georgian

AHC

Atlanta History Center

Jeff

AJ

Atlanta Journal

LAT

AJA

American Jewish Archives

MT

BOE

Brief of Evidence, In the

NYH

Supreme Court of Georgia,

NYT

Fall Term, 1 9 13

NYTrib

BT

Boston Traveler

PR

BU

Brandeis University Archives

Chicago Tribune

Georgia Department of

Archives

Jeffersonian

Los Angeles Times

Macon Telegraph

New York Herald

New York Times

New York Tribune

Pinkerton Reports, on file at the

American Jewish Archives

I. April 26, 1913

3 Though descriptions of how Mary
Phagan spent the morning hours of April
26, 1 913, appear in the April 28 editions of
all three Atlanta newspapers, the most
accurate and concise presentation of the
information can be found in the interviews
Detective L. P. Whitfield conducted with
Fannie Coleman and Ollie Phagan: PR,
May 2, 1913, pp. 1-3.

3 "exceedingly well-developed": Fan-
nie Coleman in PR, filed by W. D. Mac-
Worth, May 13, 1913, p. 25.

3 "Well, Myrt I don't know": Mary
Phagan to Myrtle Barmore, in Hutch
Johnson, "The Leo Frank Case" (master's
thesis, Florida State University, 1966).

4 Accounts of Mary Phagan's back-
ground appear in the April 28, 19 13, edi-
tions of all three Atlanta newspapers as

well as in her mother's testimony at Leo
Frank's trial: BOE, p. 1.

4 "My pa ain't no millyunaire": "My
Pa," originally published in Successful
Farmer y reprinted by AC, May 14, 19 13.

5 the average workweek lasted 66
hours: Leonard Dinnerstein, The Leo
Frank Case (New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1968), p. 7.

5 Journal of Labor reported four thou-
sand requests: ibid., p. 8.

5 In 1905,2,414 . . . died: Franklin Gar-
rett, Atlanta and Environs (Athens, Ga.:
University of Georgia Press, 1969), vol. 2,

P- 559-

5 they'd staged their own musicale:
AJ, April 2, 1 913; Gene Wiggins, Fiddlin'
Georgia Crazy (Urbana: University of Illi-
nois Press, 1987), pp. 48-49.

652

NOTES TO PAGES 6-l6

6 THINKS GEORGIA TREATS: AG, April
26,1913.

6 "Georgia is the only state": ibid.
6 "little girl in the mill town": AC, June

4, 1913.

6 "A Funeral by Lamplight": AC, edi-
torial, imposing upon, May 4, 1913.

6 "Our principles": AC, April 27, 1913.

7 "the awful curse": AC, April 28,
19 13. Alexander McKelway would later
blame Mary Phagan's murder on Geor-
gia's failure to enact child labor laws.
See girl's death laid to factory evils,
AG, April 30, 1913.

7 " "Thy Kingdom come' ": AC, April
27, 1913.

7 "in America today": AG, May 5,

1913.

8 "a hundred dull red eyes": C. Vann
Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel
(New York: The Macmillan Company,

1938), P- 35i-

8 "Old Man Peepul ... the Standard
Oil Crowd": ibid., pp. 35 1, 357.

8 "fat old dago . . .voluptuous women":
ibid.,p.433.

8 "in the Valley of the Shadow . . .
Your Uncle T.E. W.": ibid., pp. 43 1 , 433.

9 2,719^ gross of new pencils: BOE,
Defendant's Exhibit 3, p. 254 and Defen-
dant's Exhibit 4a, p. 257.

10 "Largest Manufacturer of Disinfec-
tant": Atlanta City Directory igos, p. 60.

12 "first white female child": David
Marx, "History of the Jews of Atlanta,"
Reform Advocate, November 4, 191 1.

12 For a thorough history of both
Atlanta's Jewish community and the Heb-
rew Benevolent Congregation presided
over by David Marx, see Steven Hertz-
berg's authoritative Strangers Within the
Gate City (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society of America, 1978), pp. 19,40, 1 15.

12 "The Germans . . . shook their
heads": Eli N. Evans, The Provincials (New
York: Atheneum, 1973,), p. 276.

12 "Marx would have been": ibid.,
p. 278.

12 "He [Marx] was trying to say": ibid.

13 formed the Standard Club: Garrett,
Atlanta and Environs, vol. 2, p. 481.

13 "a five o'clock town": Eleanor
Ringel, interviewed by author, summer
1986.

13 "the permanent rank": AJ, April 27,

I9I3-

J 3 $357,ooo for prime commercial lots:
AC, April 27, 1913. Converted to 1999
dollars, the property would have sold for
$6,050,847.

13 "cubist gowns . . . cubist walk": AG,
May 14, 1913.

13 displaying . . . "September Morn":
AJ, June 14, 1913.

13 campaign to raise the city's popula-
tion: AG, June 9, 1913.

14 "We have . . . put business": Henry
Grady, in Thomas Daniel Young, Floyd C.
Watkins and Richard Croom Beatty, The
Literature of the South (Glenview, 111.: Scott,
Foresman, 1968), p. 478.

14 "the bitterness of defeat": AC,
April 27, 1913.

14 composed a piano trilogy: AG, June
23, 1913.

15 "I frankly and freely confess my-
self '.AG, June 29, 1913.

15 John Slaton and Luther Z. Rosser:
AC, April 27, 1913.

15 embroiled in a battle in Rabun
County: AG, May 25, 19 13. (Rosser's
co-counsel, Alex King, was one of the
founders of King and Spalding, Atlanta's
most influential law firm: The First Hun-
dred Years, authorized history of King
and Spalding, Atlanta: privately published,
1985, p. 87.)

15 "one of the greatest scenic won-
ders": AG, May 25, 1913.

15 "once Georgia was largely attrac-
tive": AG, April 27, 1913.

15 "The most beautiful sight": C. Vann
Woodward, Origins of the New South
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 195 1), p. 418.

16 grand finale performance of . . .

NOTES TO PAGES 16-33

653

Tosca:AJ, April 26, 1913, and AC, April 27, 16 a red-nosed dandy: AC, April 27,

1913. 1913-

16 "A Week of Wonders": A/, April 27, 17 "The majority of them": AJ, April

1913. 26,1913.

2. Look Out, White Folks

18 "a white woman has been killed":
AG, April 30, 1 9 13.

18 "I rubbed the dirt and trash": ibid.

19 "Look out, white folks": AC, April
28, 1913.

19 "I did not see the body.": AG, April
30, 1913.

19 "By raising the skirt": Executive
Clemency Hearing transcript, pp. 144-45.

20 "said he wood love me": Murder
Note #1, BOE, State's Exhibit Y.

20 "put it off on" . . . "White folks,
that's me": AC, July 30, 1 913.

21 "that negro hire down here": Mur-
der Note #2, BOE, State's Exhibit Z.

21 "a white man's nigger": AG, July 29,

1913.

21 "You did this": AJ, April 30, 1913.

21 "[At] almost three o' clock": AG,
April 30, 1913.

22 " 'Figuratively' speaking": AC, Oc-
tober 27, 1914.

23 My account of the anxiety at Mary's
home the night of April 26 is taken largely
from the testimony of her stepfather, John
W Coleman, at the coroner's inquest: AG,
May 1,1913.

24 Detective John Black's background
is well detailed in "How Detectives Trailed
Clues in Phagan Murder Case": AC, July
27, 1913.

25 most "immaculate attache": AC,
April 27, 1913.

25 "suave and polite": ibid.

25 "Is this Mr. Frank" . . . "I'll send
a car": statement of Leo Frank, BOE,
p. 202.

25 "Has anything happened at the fac-
tory?": testimony of W W Rogers, BOE,
pp. 11-12.

25 "His voice was hoarse": testimony
of John Black, BOE, p. 17.

26 "extremely nervous": testimony of
WW Rogers, BOE, p. 12.

26 "I asked them what the trouble
was": statement of Leo Frank, BOE,
p. 202.

26 "a drink of whisky": testimony of
WW. Rogers, BOE, p. 12.

26 "Mr. Rogers and Mr. Black differ
with me": statement of Leo Frank, BOE,
p. 202.

27 "the face of the dead girl": AJ, July

30, 1913-

28 "I stood right in the door": state-
ment of Leo Frank, BOE, p. 203.

28 "saw Leo M. Frank as he looked":
Harold W Ross, San Francisco Call, June

23, I9I5-

29 "Yes, Mary Phagan worked here":
testimony of W W Rogers, BOE, p. 13.

30 "It seemed to be caught": state-
ment of Leo Frank, BOE, p. 204.

30 "When we started down the ele-
vator": testimony of N. V. Darley, BOE,
P-32.

30 "a great deal stronger": statement
of Leo Frank, BOE, p. 204.

30 "fresh mound of human excre-
ment": testimony of W W Rogers, BOE,

P- 15.

32 they had been "borrowed": The
next day, the Journal scooped the Consti-
tution and the Georgian with a front-page
photograph of the "long tall black" note:
AJ, April 28, 19 13.

32 "unless one looked directly at the
body": AG, April 30, 1913.

33 the "tired and angry" victim: AG,
April 28, 1 91 3.

654

NOTES TO PAGES 33~42

33 when he'd called out, "Hello, 33 "was reeling slightly": yiC, April 28,

Mary": ibid. 1913.

33 "I couldn't keep my eyes off her": 34 the day's dwindling hours: state-

AC, April 28, 1913 ment of Leo Frank, BOE, pp. 206-9.

33 "That's the man".vlG, April 28,1913. 34 Ty Cobb: AC, April 27, 19 13.

3. Extra, Extra

35 "got a picture of her on the slab":
McLellan Smith, April 1964, Washington
D.C, interviewed by Leonard Dinnerstein,
AJA.

35 "showing her in street dress": AG,
April 28, 1913.

35 doctored morgue mug shot: W. A.
Swanberg, Citizen Hearst (New York:
Schribner, 1961), p. 234.

35 MRS. COLEMAN PROSTRATED: AG,

April 28, 1913.

35 "a little playful girl": ibid.
35 "The poor baby": ibid.

35 "young girls working everywhere":
ibid.

36 NEIGHBORS OF SLAIN GIRL*, ibid.
36 GRANDFATHER VOWS VENGEANCE:

ibid.

36 "I'd help lynch the man": ibid.
36 "Standing with bared head": ibid.

36 "a little laboratory work": Herbert
Asbury, "Hearst Comes to Atlanta," Amer-
ican Mercury, January 1926, p. 88.

37 "It wasn't raining": ibid. p. 90.

37 "Who Is This Man?": AG, April 28,

1913.

37 "$500 REWARD": ibid.

37 "EXCLUSIVE Information Lead-
ing to the Arrest": ibid.

37 The New York Journal printed 40
extras: Citizen Hearst, p. 189.

37 NEW STRANGLING ARREST: AG,

April 28, 1 9 13, afternoon edition.

37 ARRESTED AS GIRL'S SLAYER: ibid.,

home edition.

37 gantt arrested: ibid., night edi-
tion.

38 "in modern parlance, a wow":
Asbury, "Hearst," American Mercury, Jan-
uary 1926, p. 90.

38 celebrated both occasions: Citizen
Hearst, p. 343.

38 "not newspapers at all": ibid., pp.
192-93.

38 "To be a Hearst reporter": ibid.,

P- 233.

39 "Everything is quiet": ibid., p. 127.
39 the warship Maine: New York

Journal, February 17, 1898.

39 "ruthless, truthless newspaper jin-
goism": Citizen Hearst, p. 162.

40 Hearst offered Watson a job: C.
Vann Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian
Rebel (New York: The MacMillan Com-
pany, 1938)^.356.

40 "Bill Zimmer's Hen Call": AG,
February 17, 191 2.

40 Circulation figures for the Georgian,
Journal and Constitution from William Cur-
ran Rogers, "A Comparison of Coverage of
the Leo Frank Case" (master's thesis, Uni-
versity of Georgia, 1949).

41 For further understanding of the
political rivalry between the Constitution
and the Journal, see Dewey Grantham,
Jr.'s, Hoke Smith and the Politics of the
New South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1958).

41 crime wave sweeps city: Asbury,
"Hearst ? American Mercury, January 1926,
p. 88.

42 "This Is Why Atlanta's Electricity
Must Be Cheaper": AG, February 12, 19 12.

42 "Be An Optimist and Hitch Your

NOTES TO PAGES 42-5O

655

Wagon to the Star of Atlanta's Destiny":
ibid.

42 "familiar with the South and Geor-
gia": Asbury, "Hearst," American Mercury,
January 1926, p. 88.

42 "finest staff of any paper": De-
Witt Roberts, "Anti-Semitism and the
Leo Frank Case," report for the Anti-
Defamation League, c. 1950.

42 "Had not Hearst owned the Geor-
gian": Asbury, "Hearst," American Mer-
cury, January 1926, p. 89.

43 Hearst had feted the Slatons: AG,
April 20, 19 13.

43 Hearst's roving surrogate: Asbury,
"Hearst," American Mercury, January
1926, p. 89.

43 a Coates screamer: Don C. Seitz,
Joseph Pulitzer: Liberator of Journalism

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1924), pp.
241-42.

43 tooling around Manhattan: W. A.
Swanberg, Pulitzer (New York: Scribner,
1967), p. 279.

43 "slumbered peacefully": Asbury,
"Hearst," American Mercury, January
1926, p. 89.

44 "knowing little if anything of the
South": ibid.

44 "played the case harder": ibid.

44 the Constitution . . . devoting just a
column and a half: AC, April 28, 19 13.

44 "They couldn't verify half the
Georgian's stories": Asbury, "Hearst,"
American Mercury, January 1926, p. 88.

44 god's vengeance: AJ, April 28,
1913.

4. Onward, Christian Soldiers

46 "some white substance": testimony
of R. P. Barrett, BOE, p. 27.

46 "I had used that machine": ibid.

46 "It's Mary's hair": AJ, April 28,

1913.

47 Beavers pulled a bottle of alcohol
from his pocket: ibid.

47 "blood stains leading from the
lathe": AG, April 28, 1913.

47 "murdered in the metal room": AJ,
April 28, 1 9 13.

47 The detectives' suspicions of Gantt
are recounted in the AC, AG and AJ, April
28 and April 29, 1913.

48 "a squad of detectives and criminal
experts": AC, April 29, 1913.

48 "Newt Lee has been saying some-
thing": statement of Leo Frank, BOE, p.
209.

48 "He was rubbing his hands": AG,
April 30, 1913.

48 "Go out and have a good time": tes-
timony of Newt Lee, BOE, p. 2.

48 "Chief Lanford will tell you": state-
ment of Leo Frank, BOE, p. 209.

49 "Hello boys, what's the trouble?":
ibid.

49 "If it's clothes they want": Luther
Rosser Shelton, interviewed by author,
November 14, 1991.

49 "I am going into that room": state-
ment of Leo Frank, BOE, p. 210.

49 My account of Frank's meeting
with Chief Lanford and Luther Rosser is
taken from reports in all three Atlanta
newspapers, the transcript of Frank's Ap-
ril 28, 19 13, deposition for Lanford (BOE,
State's Exhibit B, pp. 243-45), anc * the
transcript of Frank's August 8, 1913, state-
ment at his trial (BOE, pp. 174-220).

50 "came in between 12:05 an d 12:10":
Frank's deposition for Lanford State's
Exhibit B, BOE, p. 243.

50 "I paid her and she went out": ibid.
50 "What's the matter": ibid., p. 244.
50 "after I give him the keys": ibid.

656

NOTES TO PAGES 5I-63

51 "talking to Newt Lee was J. M.
Gantt": ibid.

51 "Why, it's preposterous": statement
of Leo Frank, BOE, p. 210.

51 "showed them my underclothing":
ibid.

51 "every article of clothing": ibid.,
p.211.

52 "a ceaseless procession": AG, April
29, 1913.

52 "Come along dearie": AJ, April 29,

I9I3-

52 "two random investigations": ibid.

53 "The police place no belief: AJ,
April 28, 1913.

53 "Strange Notes Increase Mystery":
AG, April 28,1913.

53 "detectives worked diligently": AC,
April 29, 1913.

53 "a kaleidoscope": AJ Magazine,
May 18, 1913.

54 Until 1 93 1, recruits were issued a
badge: Herbert Jenkins, Keeping the Peace
(New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 1.

54 relying instead on a network of
"lock boxes": Cliff Kuhn, interviewed by
author, July 17, 1989.

54 In 1915, the force arrested 11,787
Negroes: Annual report of the Atlanta
chief of police, 19 15.

54 The portrayal of the Wood-Win-
bush police brutality scandal is taken from
accounts appearing on consecutive days in
the Atlanta Journal during the first week
of December 1910.

55 "whitewash committee": AC, Au-
gust 10,1911.

56 The best portrait of the "restricted
district" appears in a series of articles in
the Atlanta Georgian between September
24 and 27, 1912.

56 This section's overlord was a dash-
ing rogue named Charles C. Jones: AG,
September 26, 19 12.

56 "having a high old time": Dahlo-
nega Nugget, June 15, 1900.

56 "There are many who say": AG,
September 25, 19 12.

57 The influence of the Men and Re-
ligion Forward Committee is elucidated in
chapter four of Martha Tovell Nesbitt,
"The Social Gospel in Atlanta: 1900-1920"
(Ph.D. diss., Georgia State University,
1975) and in Cliff Kuhn, Living Atlanta
(Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press,
1990), pp. 188,248.

58 "When the Woodward administra-
tion went into office": AG, September 26,
1912.

58 "The action of Chief Beavers": AG,
September 24, 19 12.

58 "It was a bad mistake": AG, Sep-
tember 25, 19 1 2.

58 "Dramatic Suicide Marks Clean-
up": ibid.

58 "This is the end": ibid.

59 "I'm enforcing the law": AG, Sep-
tember 24, 19 1 2.

59 The most complete account of
Chief Beavers's triumph appears in the
Literary Digest, May 3, 1913.

59 had decreased "fully one-third":
AJ, June 9, 1913.

60 "It is useless to detain me": AC,
April 30, 1913.

60 $1,000 re ward: AC, April 29, 1913.

60 was conducted in a weathered . . .
church: AG, April 29, 1913.

61 "We pray for the police": AC, April

30, 1913.

61 "Goodbye, Mary. Goodbye": ibid.

61 PASTOR PRAYS FOR JUSTICE: AG,

April 29, 1913.

62 "preferably a Pinkerton detective":
for a reliable sketch of the Pinkerton
agency's practices, see Carl Sifakis, The
Encyclopedia of American Crime (New
York: Facts on File, 1982), pp. 569-70.

62 "assist the city detectives": state-
ment of Leo Frank, BOE, p. 21 1.

63 "John Black [seems] to suspect
me": testimony of Harry Scott, BOE,
p. 22.

63 "He [Frank] stated": ibid., p. 23.
63 "I told him [Scott] something":
statement of Leo Frank, BOE, p. 214.

NOTES TO PAGES 64-78

657

64 " 4 I know what's the trouble' ": AC,
April 29, 1 9 13.

65 THREE HANDWRITING EXPERTS! AJ,

April 29, 1913.

65 "Through its own investigations":
ibid.

65 "trying to point suspicion at Newt
Lee": A/, July 31, 1913.

66 "a little piece of material of some
shirt": statement of Leo Frank, BOE, p.

215.

66 "distinct odor of blood": ibid.

66 "how a chief of police should con-
duct himself: AC, April 30, 19 13.

67 "If you are the murderer": AC,
April 30, 1913.

67 "I was humiliated and distressed":
AG, June 15, 1913.

67 Lucille was downstairs "weeping
bitterly": AC, April 30, 191 3.

67 "humiliation and harsh sight":
statement of Leo Frank, BOE, p. 219.

67 "made light of the evidence": AJ,
April 29, 1 9 13.

67 "We have sufficient evidence": AC,
April 30, 1913.

68 "Newt, you haven't got long": ibid.
68 "lee's guilt proved \":AG, April

29, 1913.

68 "I swear 'fore God I didn't do it":
AC, April 30,1913.

68 "innocent as a babe": ibid.

69 "Lee was badly frightened": AJ,
April 30,1913.

69 "In that room was detective Scott":
statement of Leo Frank, BOE, p. 216.

69 "They put Newt Lee into a room"
ibid., pp. 216-17.

70 "for about ten minutes": testimony
of Harry Scott, BOE, p. 24.

5. A Good Name, a Bad Reputation

71 "Was Factory Used as Rende-
zvous?": AJ, May 1, 1913.

71 nude dancers' pictures: AG,
April 29, 1913.

72 "immoral purposes": AC, May 1,

1913.

72 "frolics were secretly held": ibid.

72 "Under our present condition of
morals": AG, April 29, 1913.

73 "bright [and] quick witted": AC,
May 1,1913.

73 "She began talking about Mr.
Frank": ibid.

73 he described how he'd waited in
vain for Mary: ibid.

73 "her parents feel an inward fear":
Arthur Powell, / Can Go Home Again,
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North
Carolina Press, 1943) p. 287.

73 frank tried to flirt: AC, May 1,

1913.

74 "not easily diverted from the
point at issue": AJ Magazine, April 11,
1937.

74 "I would not be holding this jury if I
were satisfied": AG, May 2, 1913.

75 "John Black and I then made an
investigation": PR, filed by Harry Scott,
May 1, 1913, p. 1.

76 "I met Helen Ferguson and secured
a statement from her": PR, filed by L. P.
Whitfield, May 6, 1913, p. 10.

76 "I was on duty at the parcel check
room": PR, filed by F.C.P, May 4, 1913,
p. 6.

77 "Going back to Friday, April 25th":
ibid., p. 7.

77 witnesses positive: AJ, April 29,

1913.

77 "to the home of Miss Lena Barn-
hardt": PR, filed by Harry Scott, May 8,
1913, p. 16.

77 "The National Pencil factory was
closed": PR, filed by L. P.Whitfield, May 5,
i9i3,P-8.

78 "when talking to some of the wo-
men": PR, filed by F.C.P, May 9, 1913,
p. 19.

658

NOTES TO PAGES 78-95

78 "I went to Mrs. Holmes' house":
PR, filed by F.C.P., May 8, 1913, p. 16.

79 "Leo Frank, the superintendent
and general manager": AC, May 2, 1913.

80 "Chess Notebook No. 1": contains
30 pages of chess gambits, the Leo Frank
Collection, AHC.

80 "I liked to make him blush": AG,
June 15, 1913.

81 "She inclines to that perfect bru-
nette type": ibid.

81 "Gibbs: $10.00, lining: $2.80": Leo
Frank collection, AHC.

82 "cases of 'love at first sight' ": AG,
June 15, 1913.

82 Lucille's valentine, Leo Frank col-
lection, AHC.

82 "Tho' I have not heard so": This
and the other letters that Leo Frank wrote
Lucille Selig in June 1909 are in the Bran-
deis University Archives.

84 "was artistic with quantities of smi-
lax": A3, December 1, 1910.

85 Katie Butler's comments appear in
an interview by Dr. Levering Neely of
Atlanta, summer 1986. In an interview by

the author on October 2, 1998, Frank's
niece, Catherine Smithline, confirmed that
Lucille suffered a miscarriage.

85 "many husbands in the world as
good as Leo": AG, June 15, 1913.

85 Paul Donehoo expounded on his
view of the coroner's function to Medora
Field Perkerson in the Atlanta Journal
Magazine, April 11, 1937.

86 "this little girl who was killed came
up": A/, May 6,1913.

86 "She asked if the metal had come":
PR, filed by Harry Scott, Defendant's
Exhibit 92, BOE, p. 306.

87 "Frank . . . startled his audience":
AC, May 6, 1913.

87 FACTORY SUPERINTENDENT'S STATE-
MENTS: AG, May 6, 1913.

87 leo frank innocent: AC, May 6,

1913.

88 " 'Do you know Leo M. Frank?'
Donehoo began": The coroner's interro-
gation of the three witnesses appears in
AC, May 9, 1913.

89 "Sensational Statements Made at
Inquest": ibid.

6. Skulduggery

91 Dr. Henry Fauntleroy Harris's cre-
dentials and background are best summa-
rized in his obituary, "death halts hunt
for cancer cure": A3, March 18, 1926.

91 phagan girl's body exhumed:
AG, May 5, 1913.

92 "The investigation has been hesi-
tating": AG, May 1, 1913.

92 "He seemed pleased with our prog-
ress": AC, May 2, 1913.

92 "Dorsey is probably the only man":
A3, May 5, 1913.

93 "the burden of convicting": AG,
May 1, 1913.

93 hair taken by Dr. Hurt . . . "has
been lost": A3, May 7, 1913.

93 "A chart was made of the cuts and
bruises": AC, May 8, 1913.

93 "The fingerprints on the body": AG,
May 7, 1913.

93 "the crime that was taken for
granted": ibid.

93 "wounds about the chest and shoul-
ders": AC, May 9, 1913.

94 Dorsey's defeat in the Applebaum
case is discussed in mrs. j. a. applebaum
acquitted: AC, April 26, 1913.

94 Dorsey's defeat in the Grace case is
discussed in dorsey unafraid as he

FACES CHAMPIONS OF THE ATLANTA BAR:

AG, August 1, 1913.

94 "an unusual negro": The Tanner
case is covered in A3, December 3, 1910.

95 "Old friends come home in the
evening": William Smith, "The Most
Unforgettable Character I've Met,"

NOTES TO PAGES 96-IO5

659

manuscript in author's possession, circa

1947-

96 Hugh Dorsey, Jr., gave an overview
of his father's past in an interview by the
author on December 3, 1984; background
information is also available in judge
r. t. dorsey breathes his last: A/, Feb-
ruary 3, I9O9, and HUGH M. DORSEY NEW

solicitor general: AG, October 26,
1910

96 the coroner's jury . . . recom-
mended: AC, May 9, 1913.

96 "Have you discovered any positive
information": AG, May 11, 1913.

97 "I wonder if they're all asleep in
there?": AC, May 11, 1913.

97 "horrible false details": AG, May

11,1913-

97 "I cannot help but sympathize": by
the Old Police Reporter, ibid.

97 "sensational and misleading" re-
ports: AC, April 30, 1913.

98 POLICE HAVE THE STRANGLER: AG,

April 29, 1913.

98 "Foster Coates made a blunder":
Herbert Asbury, "Hearst Comes to At-
lanta," American Mercury, January 1926,
p. 90.

98 "said the Georgian had called
Frank guilty": ibid.

98 "aroused the community": A J,
April 30, 1913.

98 "the storekeepers . . . rubbed their
hands": Asbury, "Hearst," American Mer-
cury, January 1926, p. 92.

99 business men protest: AJ, May
30, 1913-

99 THE SUPREMACY OF THE LAW IMG,

May 1, 1913.

99 "Coates . . . was riding wild": As-
bury, "Hearst," American Mercury, Janu-
ary 1926, p. 92.

99 "The merchants began withdrawing
their advertisements": ibid.

100 W. A. Swanberg comments on
Hearst's willingness to alter his editorial
positions in Citizen Hearst (New York:
Scribner, 1961), p. 425.

100 "I went to the pencil factory that
Saturday": AC, May 10, 1913.

10 1 Dorsey hired "the world's greatest
detective": A/, May 10, 1913.

10 1 "He [the solicitor] has some
mighty good men": AC, May 11, 1913.

10 1 "The squad at headquarters are
not inferior": AC, May 14, 1913.

101 "I have not been able to satisfy
myself: AJ, May 12, 1913.

102 "the crime was committed in the
basement": AC, May 14, 1913.

102 "struck upon the back of the
skull": ibid.

102. "a secret conversation between
two attaches": AC, May 20, 1913.

102 burns called: AG, May 12,

I9I3-

103 "the greatest detective certainly":
as quoted by Gene Caesar in The Incredi-
ble Detective: The Biography of William J.
Burns (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall, 1968), p. 188.

103 "more suggestive of a successful
salesman": ibid., pp. 14-15.

103 "I gladly welcome Mr. Burns": AC,
May 18, 1913.

103 "The girl was lured": AC, May 20,

I9I3-

104 "one entirely overlooked before":
AC, May 19, 1913.

104 "We have overlooked nothing":
AC, May 21, 1913.

104 With witnesses . . . behaving as "if
they were under instructions": AC, May

25, I9I3-

105 For an overview of the Charles W
Morse case, see Carl Sifakis, The Encyclo-
pedia of American Crime (New York:
Facts on File, 1982), p. 503. For informa-
tion on Thomas B. Felder's role in the case,
see "Felder Calls on Taft For Morse's
Parole": AJ, August 11, 191 1.

105 For insight into Thomas B. Fel-
der's ties to Atlanta society, see "Mayor
Admits Dictograph Is Correct": AG, May
24, 1913, wherein Felder discusses his
wife's leadership of the Atlanta Players'

66o

NOTES TO PAGES I06-I20

Club. For an overview of Felder's connec-
tions to the city's bar owners and houses
of prostitution, see felder denies pha-
gan bribery: AG, May 23, 1913.

106 "The affiant, while at the police
station": A/, May 23, 1913.

108 "what I say to you is strictly confi-
dential": AJ, May 21, 1913.

108 "Do you think Frank murdered
that girl?": A/, May 24, 1913.

109 "Did you tell Tom Felder": AJ,
May 25, 1913.

no Colyar was one of the subtlest
knaves ever to hit Atlanta: See "Career of
A. S. Colyar Reads Like Some Story in the
Arabian Nights," AC, May 24, 1913.

110 COL. THOMAS B. FELDER DICTO-

graphed: A/, May 23, 1913.

no "felder is the mouthpiece":
AJ, May 25, 1913.

110 "the issue is now": Felder's self-
defense is covered in AC, May 25, 1913.

in "there is no police plot to protect
Frank": AJ, May 25, 1913.

in "Mr. Felder . . . had begun to
'bombard' the public": AC, May 27, 1913.

in "Like Some Story in the Arabian
Nights": AC, May 24, 1913.

112 "probably no man in Tennessee":
ibid.

112 "Now isn't Colyar a fine speci-
men": AC, May 25, 1913.

112 "He [Colyar] may be a crook": AJ,
May 25 1913.

112 "be stripped naked and ridden
through Atlanta": ibid.

112 "This is a helluva family row": A J,
May 27, 1913.

112 "Felder does not, nor has he at any
time": AC, June 11, 1913.

113 "Once Felder charged Newport
Lanford with favoring Frank": AG, June
10, 1913.

114 "Mrs. Coleman also stated":
PR, filed by L. P. Whitfield, May 2, 1913,
page 3.

114 "I don't want you to see the girl":
AC, May 11,1913.

114 signed by a madam named Nina
Formby:j4C, May 23, 1913.

115 "I asked Miss Mills what she
knew": PR, filed by W. D. MacWorth, May
14, 1913, p. 27.

1 15 "Extraordinary passion goaded on
this man": Hugh Dorsey, Argument of
Hugh M. Dorsey at the Trial of Leo Frank
(Atlanta: Johnson-Dallis Company, 191 4)

P. 74-

115 Some of what went on during
the . . . hearings leaked: A/, May 25, 1913.

116 the grand jury was comprised: AJ,
May 28, 1913.

116 "State Faces Big Task": AG, May
28, 1913.

117 "It is regarded as likely that the
defense will claim": ibid.

117 "Should the State be able to
prove": ibid.

7. A Clean Nigger

118 "Jim Conley isn't a cornfield
negro": AC, August 3, 1913.

118 "On Saturday, April 26, 1913":
James Conley's statement to John Black
and Harry Scott, May 18, 1913, BOE,
Defendant's Exhibit 36, p. 281.

119 "with a kind of African drawl":
AC, August 3,1913.

119 "He was dead drunk": AG, May
27> I9I3-

120 "This woman is not my wife":
Conley's statement to Black and Scott,
May 18, 1913, BOE, Defendant's Exhibit
36, p. 281.

120 "Like a great dumbbell":
W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Negro South and
North": Bibliotheca Sacra 62 (July

1905).

120 "the smell of money": John
Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive

NOTES TO PAGES 120-129

66l

Era (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1977), p. 12.

120 "Negro Monte Carlos": AJ, Au-
gust 3,1913.

121 "a score of negro merry-makers":
AC, April 2, 1913.

121 of 14,045 cases tried in 1900, 9,500
involved blacks: Dittmer, Black Georgia,
pp. 88-89.

121 "Being of that vast class of soci-
ety": AJ, July 20, 1913.

121 " 'dat ain't no cocaine,' " AC, No-
vember 2, 1910.

122 "to do so would mean their com-
plete ruin": Dittmer, Black Georgia, pp.
88-89.

122 one of the region's first Jim Crow
ordinances: C. Vann Woodward, The
Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 99.

122 "the practice hit a peak between
1880 and 1900": Dittmer, Black Georgia,
p. 131.

122 My account of the 1906 Atlanta
race riot is largely taken from John
Dittmer's excellent Black Georgia in the
Progressive Era, pp. 123-31. Also help-
ful in understanding the riot is Mark
Bauerlein, Negrophobia (San Francisco:
Encounter Books, 2001).

122 TWO ASSAULTS, THIRD ASSAULT,

fourth assault: Dittmer, Black Georgia,
p. 124.

123 "The whites kill . . . good men":
ibid., p. 128.

123 25 Negroes were dead: ibid.,
p. 129.

123 "who commit the unmentionable
crime": AG, August 25, 1906.

124 My account of John D. Rocke-
feller's influence upon elite Atlanta blacks
is taken from Taylor Branch's magisterial
Parting the Waters (New York: Touchstone
Books, 1989), pp. 27-68.

124 On April 1, 1913, several hundred
well-dressed Negroes: AJ, March 29, 1913,
quarter-page ad.

1 25 Born a slave, Herndon had opened

his eponymously named barbershop
shortly after arriving in Atlanta in 1882:
Dittmer, Black Georgia, pp. 37-38.

1 25 "When you saw him walking down
the street": Kathleen Adams, interviewed
by author, February 26, 1988.

126 "Reverend Proctor was a teacher
in his pulpit": ibid.

126 "having exclusive mulattoes in
their society": Atlanta Independent, Octo-
ber 23, 1915.

126 "Mulattoes as a group": Dittmer,
Black Georgia, p. 62.

127 "when Martin Luther King [Sr.]
came to town": Kathleen Adams, inter-
viewed by author, February 26, 1988.

127 "Our church is the mother of
Atlanta University": Henry Hugh Proctor,
Between Black and White (Boston: The
Pilgrim Press, 1925), chapter 8.

127 "a disgrace to civilization and
unfit for cattle": Dittmer, Black Georgia,
p. 147.

127 In the late 1890s, Jim had attended
Mitchell Street Elementary: AG, August 4,
1913. Source for material on Ara Cooke:
Atlanta University General Catalogue,
1867-1929 (Atlanta, 1929), p. 57. Source
for material on Alice Carey: Annual Cir-
cular and Catalogue ofSpelman Seminary
(Atlanta, 1893), p. 31. Carey (whose name
in sometimes spelled without an "e") was
later the influential director of the Auburn
Avenue branch of the Atlanta Public
Library.

128 "To the best of her recollection":
PR, filed by W D. MacWorth, May 16,
1913, p. 29.

128 Subsequently, Frank would claim:
statement of Leo Frank, BOE, p. 218.

128 "Mr. Holloway stated": PR, filed
by W D. MacWorth, May 16, 19 13, p. 29.

128 "look into a drawer in the [office]
safe": ibid., p. 30.

129 "The handwriting appears to be
identical": ibid.

129 "Conley jumped up from behind
the washstand": ibid.

662

NOTES TO PAGES I29-I44

129 "We were unsuccessful": PR, filed
by Harry Scott, May 18, 1913, p. 33.

129 "a negro wearing a green derby
hat": ibid.

130 "we've got the deadwood on you":
AC, July 13, 1913.

130 "White folks, I'm a liar": ibid.

130 " 'I didn't do it,' Jim swore": ibid.

131 they took him to a basement-level
isolation cell: ibid.

131 "Boss, I wrote those notes": AJ,
May 24, 1913.

131 "On Friday evening before the
holiday": Statement of James Conley, May
24, 1913, BOE, Defendant's Exhibit 37,
pp. 282-83.

132 "false in every detail": AG, May
26, 1913.

132 "put through such a severe cross-
examination": AJ, May 26, 1913.

132 "Conley wrote the notes": ibid.

132 "Conley's delay in making his con-
fession": AG, May 27, 1913.

132 "No theory that has placed the
responsibility of the crime upon Frank":
AG, May 24, 1913.

133 "absurdities in its structure": AG,
May 27, 1913.

x 33 "gaining information against
Frank": AG, May 28, 1913.

133 "as if they are convinced he com-
mitted the murder": AJ, May 29, 19 13.

133 "Conley grew weak, lost appe-
tite": AC, July 13, 1913.

133 SUSPICION TURNED TO CONLEY*.

AG, May 28, 1913.

134 "I make this statement, my second
statement": Statement of James Conley,
May 28, 1 9 13, BOE, Defendant's Exhibit
38, pp. 283-89.

136 "had practically cleared the mys-
tery": AG, May 28, 1913.

136 "their most material witness": AC,
May 29, 1913.

136 "Now the theory of the crime we
entertain": AJ, May 29, 1913.

137 "Three responsible officials": AG,
May 29, 1913.

137 "Little if any credence": AJ, May
29, 1913.

137 Luther Rosser had taken the train
to rugged Rabun County: AG, May 26,

1913.

138 "Detectives who pin faith to the
negro's story": AC, May 30, 19 13.

138 "I wish they would let me face Mr.
Frank": AJ, May 31, 1913.

138 "I waited for him downstairs":
Statement of James Conley, May 29, 19 13,
BOE, Defendant's Exhibit 39, pp. 289-91.

140 CONLEY SAYS HE HELPED FRANK:

AC, May 30,1913.

140 "The negro's affidavit": AJ, May

3°> I9I3-

140 "they considered the negro's final
affidavit proof conclusive": AC, May 30,

1913.

141 "I feel like a clean nigger": AC,
May 31, 1913.

141 "when he whistled to you twice?":
This part of Jim Conley's account is from
AG, May 30, 1913.

141 "When I got back here, I got
scared and hollered to Mr. Frank": ibid.

142 "He [Frank] picked up her feet":
ibid.

142 "I took her body out of the eleva-
tor": ibid.

142 "Show us the way you left the
girl's body": ibid.

142 "You can't help but believe him":
ibid.

142 "Frank climbed up this ladder":
ibid.

143 "Mr. Frank sat down in his swivel
chair": This part of Conley's account is
from AJ, May 30, 19 13.

143 "He told me to come out of the
wardrobe": ibid.

143 "He handed me this pad and then
told me to write": ibid.

143 "Have you been abused or threat-
ened by the officers": ibid.

143 CONLEY TAKEN TO FACTORY: ibid.

144 "Conley appeared perfectly com-
posed": AG, May 30, 1913.

NOTES TO PAGES I45-I52

663

8. A Tramp Alumnus

145 CONLEY LAYS BARE PHAGAN

crime: AG, May 30, 1913.

145 the true sponsors of this get-
together were not especially concerned
with Conley's fate: William Smith, autobi-
ographical notes, circa 1940, pp. 29-30.
(Smith's notes, on which much of this
chapter is based, were provided to the
author by Smith's son Walter. They were
written in the third person, apparently as a
curriculum vitae in narrative form as part
of a job application. For clarity's sake, I
have transcribed them into the first person
when quoting directly.)

145 "he ain't paid me nuthin' yet": AC,
May 31,1913.

146 "ratification of my employment":
AC, October 4, 1914.

146 "Practically my entire communi-
cation at that time": ibid.

146 "The girl must have been dead for
about 15 minutes": AJ> May 31, 1913.

147 "only such officials as were
approved by me": NYT, October 5,
1914.

147 "a sincere effort to protect Con-
ley": ibid.

147 "In a very short time, I became
convinced": Smith, notes, pp. 29-30.

148 "I sacrificed the compensation I
was to receive": NYT, October 5, 1914.

148 "penniless and friendless": Smith,
notes, p. 32.

148 "No white man killed Mary Pha-
gan": AC, May 31, 1913.

148 "great influence and unlimited
financial means": Smith, notes, p. 32.

148 "shared the view of the prosecut-
ing attorney": ibid., p. 30.

148 "My justification for this course":
ibid., p. 32.

148 "in the early part of my career":
ibid., p. 17.

149 "exercise that extreme care and
caution which a prudent man would exer-
cise": "Georgia Railway & Electric Co. v.

Rich," Georgia Reports, March, 191 1 term,

p. 498.

149 "We are not unaware of the trying
situation": ibid.

150 "handle the matter with great
care": Smith, notes, p. 19; details of the
Merritt case are presented in "Merritt v.
The State," Georgia Reports, March 1910
term, p. 263.

150 "a reasonable doubt of Roger
Merritt's guilt": Smith, notes, p. 20.

150 Smith details his relationship with
Proctor in his autobiographical notes, pp.
20-22.

150 Proctor left the plan's implemen-
tation to Smith: Smith, ibid., pp. 19-20.

151 "Out of this war": AChr, April 29,
1912.

151 Smith gives an overview of the
Intercollegiate Oratorical Contest on page
6 of his autobiographical notes. The con-
test is also described in the November 3,
1900, editions of the Atlanta Constitution
and the Atlanta Journal

152 "The Negro Problem": Smith,
notes, p. 6.

152 "a fair and just deal for the
'Brother in Black' ": ibid.

152 "The South's Contribution to the
American Republic": AC, October 30,
1898; AJ, October 31, 1898.

152 "not tarnished by those vilifying
flings": Smith, notes, p. 6.

152 "Educate the negro, and you spoil
a good field hand": Eli N Evans, The
Provincials (New York: Atheneum, 1973),
p. 144.

152 The description of Smith's per-
sonal appearance and demeanor is taken
from the author's June 22, 1987, interview
with his daughter, Mary Lou Smith Allen,
and from numerous interviews with his
son Walter. Details regarding his early
legal cases come from Thornton et al. v.
Jackson, executor, Georgia Reports, Octo-
ber 1907 term, pp. 700-704; Hendrix v.

664

NOTES TO PAGES I53-164

Elliott, Georgia Reports, March 1907
term, pp. 301-4; Wright, Williams and
Wadley v. Brown, sheriff, Georgia Reports,
October 1909 term, pp. 389-90; Sharp v.
The State, Georgia Reports, March 1910
term, pp. 605-7.

153 "to eventually become the Solici-
tor General": Smith, notes, p. 27.

154 "one of the biggest public dem-
onstrations": AJ, May 29, 1908.

155 Smith had plunged into deeper
waters: Smith, notes, pp. 12-13.

155 Smith was an avid joiner: Smith,
notes, pp. io-ii.

156 Information on Smith's courtship
of his wife and their subsequent relation-
ship comes from the author's June 22,
1987, interview with the couple's daugh-
ter, Mary Lou Smith Allen.

156 "beautiful Southern queens": Wil-
liam Smith, "The Turning of a Hundred
Years," in the University of Georgia stu-
dent magazine, The Georgian, March 1901,

P- 155-

156 Information regarding the Smiths'
Atlanta home life comes from numerous
interviews over a ten-year period with
their youngest son, Walter.

157. "half rations of an inferior grade,
sleeping in jails": Smith, notes, p. 8.

157 "a prejudice against the 'stars
and stripes' ": William Smith, "A Tramp
Alumnus," The Georgian, April 1902, p.

245.

157 From Montreal, he shipped as a

deckhand on the steamboat Hamilton to
Toronto: Smith, notes, p. 9.

157 "cutting cane on a sugar planta-
tion": Smith, "A Tramp Alumnus," p. 247.

157 "seen something of America be-
fore settling down": Smith, notes, p. 7.

157 "Chinese, dagoes and negroes":
Smith, "A Tramp Alumnus," p. 247.

158 "learned a great deal about his fel-
low Americans": Smith, notes, pp. 9-10.

158 "Georgia is on the war path!":
Shelby Foote, The Civil War (New York:
Vintage Books, 1986), vol. 1, p. 16.

158 "Resolved that the Interference
with Strikes": The Red and Black, Univer-
sity of Georgia student newspaper, April
12,1901.

159 "The Northern states with their
better educational facilities": Smith, "The
Turning of a Hundred Years," The Geor-
gian, March 1901, p. 156.

159 "Negroes will be banished": ibid.,

P- 157.

159 "vase in which roses have once
been distilled": ibid., p. 159.

160 My account of Dora Smith's death
comes both from interviews with Walter
Smith and from the Augusta Chronicle,
August 26, 1897.

160 "dulled his youthful experience of
grace": AChr, February 22, 1889.

160 "The Triumph of Individualism":
AC, November 3, 1900.

160 "I made application to a number of
prominent law firms": Smith, notes, p. 10.

9. Skirmishes

162 "the severest sort of grilling": AG, 164 cook's sensational affidavit:
June 2, 1913. AG, June 4, 1913.

163 "I don't know a thing about it": 164 "fully as startling": Minola Mc-
AJ, June 9, 19 13. Knight's statement is taken from AC, June

163 "Both men are employees": AC, 5, 19 13.

June 4, 19 13. 164 "Sunday, Miss Lucille said":

163 "I will not talk": ibid. ibid.

NOTES TO PAGES 165-184

665

165 "I don't know why Mrs. Frank
didn't come": ibid.

165 "When I left home": ibid.

165 "Incoherent Statement": AG, June

4,i9i3.

165 "The affidavit is nearly all hear-
say": AJ, June 4, 1913.

166 "Did you sign": AG, June 5,

I9I3-

166 "I ain't got no lawyer": ibid.

166 "Luther Z. Rosser maintains his
sphinxlike": AJ, June 9, 1913.

166 "Luther Z. Rosser maintains his
usual": AC, June 3, 19 13

167 "The action of the Solicitor Gen-
eral": Lucille Frank's open letter appears
in .AG, June 5,1913.

167 "My husband was home": ibid.

168 "I have been compelled": ibid.
168 "I know my husband": ibid.

168 "Minola McKnight": AJ, June 5,

1913.

168 "I have read the statement": AG,
June 5, 1913.

169 "urging him to take steps to pre-
vent": AJ, June 6, 1913.

169 "If the Phagan tragedy": AC, June

7, I9I3-

169 "To be strictly truthful": AG, June

8, 1913.

170 "I think fairness to Mr. Frank":
AG, June 7, 1913.

170 "no saint": AG, June 15, 1913.

171 "He ever has been": ibid.

171 "Mr. Dorsey and the detectives":
AC, June 8, 1913.

171 "a very ordinary, ignorant": AC,
June 11,1913.

171 "out of his head": AJ, June 10,

1913.

171 "Conley made one statement":
AC, June 11, 1913.

172 "This negro is not to give any":
ibid.

172 "police petting": AG, June 11,

1913.

172 "made passionately insane": AC,
June 3, 1913.

174 "protest . . . farce": AJ, June 13,

1913.

174 "That the detectives should wish":
This and the account of Jim Conley's
release and rearrest are from AG, June 13,

1913.

174 "Well, Jim": ibid.

175 "I didn't want to get out": ibid.

175 My account of the deal made by
Hugh Dorsey and William Smith is drawn
from Smith, notes, p. 30.

176 My portrait of Reuben Arnold
is taken from his father's obituary,

ALL ATLANTA MOURNS DEATH OF COL.

Arnold: AJ, July 15, 1914, and details
provided by his son, Thomas, in a
lengthy letter to the author dated August
23, 1989.

177 "The sting of Reuben Arnold":
AC, August 7, 1 9 13.

177 "I hazard not a thing": AG, June
22, 1913.

178 "Gentlemen, some months ago":
AJ, June 26, 19 1 3.

178 SHE REALLY POSTPONED: ibid.

179 NEW PHAGAN EVIDENCE: AG, July

9, I9I3-

179 pointed "more strongly than ever":
ibid.

179 "At the trap door": PR, May 15,
1913, p. 27.

179 "We then secured": ibid., p. 28.

180 "I was in Atlanta": AG, July 13,

1913.

181 "We place the utmost reliance":
AG, July 10, 1913.

181 mincey's own story: Min-
cey's account appears in AG, July 14,

1913.

182 "I stopped and got into": ibid.

183 "thoroughly disgusted": ibid.
183 "I sincerely doubt": ibid.

183 conley in sweatbox: AG, July

11,1913.

184 "Although evidence was con-
stantly piling up": Herbert Asbury, "Hearst
Comes to Atlanta," American Mercury,
January 1926, p. 91.

666

NOTES TO PAGES 184-I96

184 "If it can be shown": AG, July 13, 187 "gratification of his professional

1913. pride": ibid.

184 "It would be unusual": AG, July 187 "It is appropriate": ibid.

20, 1913. 187 "The Solicitor General": AG, July

185 "went over the head": AC, July 19, 21, 1913.

1913. 188 "I am requested": ibid.

185 "The meeting's only purpose": 188 "It made absolutely no differ-

AG, July 19, 1913. ence": AG, July 22, 1913.

185 "an unseen force": AJ, July 19, 188 "midnight seances": Leo Frank,
1 9 13. "Leaflet No. 7," June 3, 1914, on file at the

186 "Jim Conley has been dealing": New York office of the Anti-Defamation
AC, July 19, 1913. League.

186 "If the grand jurors": ibid. 189 "to make Conley impervious":

186 "The Grand Jury": AG, July 20, Walter Smith, interviewed by author, July

1913. 8, 1986.

10. Prosecution

190 A preliminary note on sources.
During the 1960s, the transcript of the Leo
Frank trial disappeared from the records
room of the Fulton County Courthouse.
The only official record of the proceedings
now extant is the Brief of Evidence, a
digest of testimony vetted by the state and
the defense and used during the appeals
process. While authoritative, the brief,
owing to the fact that the lawyers' ques-
tions do not appear in it, contains just one
side of the trial's back-and-forth. Fortu-
nately for posterity, the newspapers of the
time published virtually verbatim coverage
of important legal proceedings. By mid-
afternoons throughout July and August of
1913, the Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta
Georgian were on the streets with editions
containing every word uttered at the morn-
ing sessions. The next day, Atlantans awak-
ened to copies of the Atlanta Constitution
containing every word uttered at the after-
noon sessions. I have drawn exhaustively
on these accounts to present the battle that
was the Frank trial. Where inconsistencies
exist, I relied on the brief as arbiter. For the
most part, however, the newspaper cover-
age is solid. In the trenches for the Journal

were Harold W. Ross, Harllee Branch and
Charles Phillips, Jr. From the Georgian
were Archie Lee, William Flythe, James
Keeling and John Minar. The Constitution
was represented by Sidney Ormond, Ver-
non Stiles and Britt Craig. These men, gen-
erally writing without bylines, produced
thousands of inches of copy. Their words
live on in my trial chapters. For brevity's
sake, I have cited only selected passages.
Otherwise, my notes for "Prosecution,"
"Defense" and "Verdict" would run to
scores of pages.

190 "Hardly once during this morn-
ing":^/, July 28, 1913.

190 "The men and girls": ibid.

191 "probably will be the coolest":
AG, July 28, 1913.

193 "If there was any fear": ibid.

193 "Frank looked quickly": AC, July
29, 1913.

194 "Not infrequently": AG, July 28,

1913.

195 "Of the many juries": AC, July 29,

1913.

195 "The jury apparently": AG, July
29, 1913.

196 When court reconvened: There

NOTES TO PAGES I96-238

667

were no opening statements in the Frank 219 "The detective's features flushed":

trial. The proceedings simply began with AG, July 31, 19 13.

Dorsey's examination of Mrs. Fannie 221 "Our contention is": AJ, July 31,

Coleman. 1913.

196 "Many spectators": AJ, July 29, 221 "saw what I expected": AG, July

1913. 3M9I3.

196 "During [Mrs. Coleman's] mental 222 "Collapse of Testimony": ibid,
suffering": AC, July 29, 1913. 222 "Detective John Black": AJ, July

197 "as though a barber had passed a 31, 1913.

razor": ibid.

222 defense riddles: AC, July 31,

198 "The positive way in which little 19 13.

Epps": ibid.

199 "dem big lawyers": AG, July 29,

1913.

201 "Diagram of Phagan Murder":
ibid.

201 "Has you ever seed one whut's
been hit": ibid.

202 "reminded me much of a big mas-
tiff': AG, July 30, 1913.

204 "The defense expects to show":
AG, July 29, 1913.

204 "We've got to commence": AJ,
July 29, 1913.

205 "the groundwork for their the-
ory": AG, July 29, 1913.

206 "smiled an applause as gracious":
ibid.

206. "Seasoned courthouse officials":
AC, July 30,1913.

206 "The negro appeared": AJ, July
29, 1913.

206 "As for the examination of Newt":
AG, July 30, 1 9 13.

206 "Tune and again": ibid.

223 "When Wednesday's session": ibid.
223 "There is a feeling": AG, July 31,

1913.

226 "Scott refused": ibid.

227 "Scott proved": A/, July 31, 1915.
229 "Barrett made probably the best":

AG, July 31,1915.

229 "He admitted that the blood": A/,
August 1, 1913.

230 "The state fared better": AG,
August 1, 1913.

234 "I made an examination": BOE,

P- 49-

234 "It is perfectly plain sailing": AC,
August 2, 1913.

236 "I discovered no violence": BOE,
p. 46.

236 "Her hymen was not intact": ibid.,
P- 47-

236 STATE ADDS LINKSMG, AugUSt 2,
1913.

237 "Gentlemen, it has been said": AJ,
August 2, 1913.

237 "turned a liberal hose": AC, Au-

207 "Will Conley be as nimble- gust 3,1913.
witted": ibid. 237 Hugh Dorsey describes William

210 "Lawyers must wear coats": AJ, Smith buying new clothes for Conley

July 30, 1913. in his closing argument: Argument of

212 frank laughs for first time: Hugh M. Dorsey at the Trial of Leo Frank

AG, July 30, 1913. (Atlanta: Johnson-Dallis Company, 1914),

212 "Arms akimbo, glasses firmly set": pp. 131-32.

ibid. 237 "The State HAS definitely

213 "In the elevator shaft": BOE, shown"MG, August 2, 1913.

p. 15- 238 "The questions to be thrashed

216 girl's story: AG, July 30, 1913. out": AG, August 3, 1913.
216 "Defense to Claim": AJ, July 30, 238 a World Series baseball game: AJ,

I9I3- August 4, 1913.

668

NOTES TO PAGES 24O-265

240 "with the voice of a young
teacher": ibid.

240 "with an expression of pathetic
pleading": AG, August 4, 1913.

241 "He says, 'Well, that one you

say'": BOE, p. 55.

242 "strained forward in their seats":
AG, August 4, 1913.

242 "Apparently . . . they were will-
ing": AC, August 6, 1913.

243 "The negro forgot nothing": AG,
August 4, 1913.

243 "Jim's story was so completely":
AJ, August 4, 1913.

243 "Jim Conley has upset traditions":
AG, August 5, 1913.

244 "Wise lawyers in the courtroom":
AC, August 5, 1913.

246 "the vilest and most amazing": AJ,
August 4, 1 9 13.

246 "The crossing of Conley": AG, Au-
gust 5, 1913.

246 "a painted-cheek girl": AC, August

5,1913.

249 "This man, as your honor knows":
AJ, August 5, 1913.

249 "Don't you know a nigger never
had sausage": AG, August 5, 1913.

250 "During Mr. Rosser's question-
ing": ibid.

252 "When a recess was ordered": AJ,
August 5, 1913.

252 "The value of this evidence": AC,
August 5, 1913.

253 "There is no use in getting
wrought up": AC, August 6, 1913.

253 DEFENSE MOVES TO STRIKE: AJ,

August 5, 1913.

253 "his hopeless task": AG, August 5,

1913.

254 "As to how that dung came to be
in the shaft": BOE, pp. 72-73.

254 "Did you meet a man named
Mincey":^4C, August 6, 19 13.

255 "He moved uneasily": AG, August

6,1913.

255 "Would Judge Roan rule for the
state": AC, August 7, 1913.

256 "Jim . . . don't you say a word": AJ,
August 6, 1 9 13.

257 My account of the method
whereby William Smith received his $40
payment is taken from the lawyer's auto-
biographical notes, p. 30, and william

SMITH TELLS WHY HIS OPINION HAS

changed, AC, October 4, 1914.

257 "I have serious doubts": AC,
August 7, 1913.

257 "a riot of applause": ibid.

257 roan's ruling heavy blow.vIG,
August 7, 1 913.

258 Conley's story was "a ragtime
composition": ibid.

258 "Arnold failed to develop": AC,
August 7, 1913.

259 "Every single thing": AG, August

6, 1913.

260 "If the story Conley tells": ibid.

11. Defense

261 the undoing of conley: AG, 262 "Childs's testimony if believed":

August 8, 1913. ibid.

261 "the biggest element in the case": 263 "He was chewing his lips": BOE,

ibid. p. 81.

261 "Not one in a hundred": AC, 264 "Scott's statement created": AC,

August 8, 1913. August 8, 1913.

261 "Further than this witness": AG, 265 "looked a bit too short": AG,

August 7, 1913. August 8, 1913.

NOTES TO PAGES 266-303

669

266 "If the testimony": AG, ibid.
268 "Defense Will Seek to Show": AC,
August 9, 1913.

270 "partly spoiled": AG, August 9,

1913.

272 "Under the heading 'Material
Costs' ":BOE, pp. 88-89.

274 "Saturday was by far": AC, August
10, 1913.

274 "As all interest centered": AG,
August 10, 1913.

277 "The human tongue could not
produce": BOE, p. 161.

277 "the best the defense": AC, August
12,1913.

279 "a sturdy farmer": AC, August 13,

1913.

279 "He was frightened": AJ, August
12,1913.

280 "a direct contradiction": AJ, Au-
gust 13, 1913.

282 "It's the most unfair thing": AC,
August 13, 1913.

284 "with emphasis": AJ, August 13,

1913.

286 "No, nor you either . . . Gentile
dog . . . Christian dog." According to the
Atlanta Constitution of August 14, 1913,
Rae Frank said simply, "No, nor you
either." Hugh Dorsey, in his closing argu-
ment, reminded the jurors that Mrs. Frank
had called him "a dog": Hugh Dorsey,
Argument of Hugh M. Dorsey at the Trial
of Leo Frank (Atlanta: Johnson-Dallis
Company, 1914), p. 2. The New York Sun
for October 12, 1913, reports that Mrs.
Frank used the term "Christian dog."

287 MOTHER OF FRANK DENOUNCES:

AC, August 14, 1913.

290 "For a minute or two": AJ, August

14, 1913.

290 "The loyalty with which Frank's
instructors": AC, August 15, 1913.

291 "Dewey He well has been
brought": AC, August 16, 1913.

291 "The only use we would have had
for Mincey": AC, August 23, 1913.

294 "perfectly composed": AC, August
16,1913.

294 "Dear Uncle": BOE, Defendant's
exhibit number 42, p. 294.

295 "The examination of Rae Frank":
AG, August 17, 1913.

296 "Miss Jackson's testimony": AC,
August 17, 1913.

297 "the defense unquestionably":
AG, August 17, 1 9 13.

297 "It is unique in the annals":
ibid.

297 "Many people are arguing":
ibid.

299 "I married in Atlanta": BOE, p.

195.

299 "My duties . . . were": ibid., p. 175.

299 "picture his every movement":
AG, August 17, 1913.

299 "No one came into my office":
BOE, p. 176.

299 the earnestness one can imagine:
AJ, August 19, 1913.

300 "Of all the mathematical work":
BOE, p. 178.

300 "The first order": ibid.

300 "Starting here with order 7187":
ibid., p. 184.

301 "To the best of my knowledge":
ibid., p. 186.

302 "Now, one of the most intricate":
ibid., p. 195.

302 "One of the tricks of the trade":
ibid., p. 191.

302 "This sheet, the financial": ibid., p.

195.

303 "Gentlemen, I was nervous": AG,
August 18, 1913.

303 While discussing his anxiety at the
sight of Mary Phagan's body, Frank also
addressed his behavior when the Atlanta
police arrived at his home the morning of
the murder, his actions later that day while
visiting the pencil factory and his contacts
with the investigating officers prior to his
arrest. These comments are quoted in my
second chapter, "Look Out, White Folks,"

670

NOTES TO PAGES 304-334

and in chapter four, "Onward, Christian 304 "Gentlemen, I know nothing":

Soldiers." ibid. , p. 2 1 9.

304 "The date I was taken": BOE, 305 "Very few in the courtroom": AG,

p. 219. August 19,1913.

304 "grilled the negro": ibid., p. 217. 305 "There will be those": ibid.

304 "I did not speak": ibid., p. 218.

12. Verdict

306 "would be embarrassing for la-
dies": AG, August 19, 1913. Despite Dor-
sey's request, both Mrs. Franks remained
in the courtroom.

306 "unprintable": ibid.

306 "sprang a sensation": AJ y August

19,1913.

307 "I was present when Minola":
BOE, pp. 226-27.

308 STATE IS HARD HIT: AC, August
20, I913.

311 women arraign: AG, August 20,

1913.

312 "In reply to the statement": BOE,
p. 243.

313 "They had the right to inquire":
AJ, August 21,1913.

3 13 "It may seem strange": ibid.
314. "You doubtless have read": ibid.

314 "It was because": ibid.

3 15 "The idea that Jim": ibid.

315 "a fellow named Mincey": ibid.

316 "God grant that we can get away":
AG, August 21,1913.

316 "This man Kendley": AJ, August
21,1913.

316 "I tell everybody": ibid.

317 "What did it amount to?": AJ,
August 22, 1 9 13.

323 "Gentlemen, take a look at this":
AC, August 23, 1913.

324 "Conley is a plain, beastly,
drunken": AJ, August 22, 1913.

324 "They got a dirty, black": ibid.

325 "There's Professor Starnes": AG,
August 22, 19 13.

325 "Professor Scott would say": ibid.

325 "My friend Hooper said": AJ,
August 23, 1913.

326 "If you, as white men": AG, Au-
gust 22, 1913.

326 "The gentlemen have abused":
AC, August 23, 19 13.

326 "Gentlemen, do you think that I":
ibid.

327 "I honor the race": AG, August 23,

1913.

327 "This great people": AC, August

23, 1913.

327 "Now gentlemen, put yourself:
Hugh Dorsey, Argument of Hugh M.
Dorsey at the Trial of Leo Frank (At-
lanta: Johnson-Dallis Company, 1914),
p. 26.

328 "What business did this man
have": ibid., p. 27.

328 William Smith discusses organiz-
ing the pro-Dorsey demonstration on the
courthouse steps in William Smith, "My
Views as to the Death Notes," intro-
duction, p. 2, John M. Slaton Collection,
GDA.

328 "absolute decorum": AG, August
23, 1913.

328 "unspoken fear": AChr, August 26,

1913.

329 "Oscar Wilde was an Irish knight":
Dorsey, Argument, p. 3 1 .

329 "Up goes your alibi": AG, August
23,1913.

330 "I know enough about human
nature": Dorsey, Argument, p. 43.

334 "Only the limitations": AC, Au-
gust 24, 1913.

notes to pages 334-348

671

334 "The real reason": AChr, August
26,1913.

335 "a white hot philippic": AG, Au-
gust 23, 1913.

336 "Gentlemen of the jury": Dorsey,
Argument, pp. 99-100.

336 "Did you make an earnest": ibid.,
p. 103.

341 "the cry of guilty took winged
flight": AC, August 26, 1913.

341 "The solicitor reached no farther":
ibid.

342 "Mrs. Frank huddled closer":
ibid.

342 My source for the number of
Georgians printed on the day of Frank's

336 "Like a dog to his vomit": ibid., conviction is the Atlanta Georgian of
p. in. August 26, 1913.

337 "I tell you, gentlemen": ibid., 343 "It is ordered and adjudged": AJ,
p. 121. August 26, 1913.

337 "This cabbage proposition": ibid., 343 "The trial which has just oc-

p. 123. curred":>4G, August 26, 1913.

337 "So far, not a word": ibid., p. 130. 343 "The jury heard none of the cheer-

338 "The defense's failure": ibid., ing":ibid.

p. 139. 343 JIM CONLEY, THE EBONY CHEVA-

338 "Gentlemen, every act": ibid., lier: AG, August 7,1913.
pp. 145-46. 344 "Well, boss, dem niggers": ibid.

13. Appeals in and out of Court

345 "Oh, please take me away": AC,
August 26, 19 13.

345 "The long case": MT, August 27,

1913.

346 "I would like to enlist": David
Marx to Louis Marshall, August 30, 19 13:
Leonard Dinnerstein, The Leo Frank Case
(New York: Columbia University Press,
1968), p. 74.

346 "Mr. Ochs is a non-Jewish Jew":
Garet Garrett diary, courtesy Richard
Cornuelle, June 30, 1 915, p. 59.

346 resisted pleas to take the lead:
Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones, The Trust
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
I 999)> PP- 94~95- Tifft and Jones present a
thorough study of Ochs's ambivalent view
of his Judaism.

346 "a Jewish newspaper": Garrett
diary, August 21, 19 15, p. 94.

346 attorney-at-large for the Jewish
people: Morton Rosenstock, Louis Mar-
shall: Defender of Jewish Rights (Detroit:

Wayne State University Press, 1965),
p. 27.

347 "always talking too much about
Jews": ibid., p. 40.

347 "The correspondent . . . reported":
Garrett diary, August 26, 19 15, p. 96.

347 "horrible judicial tragedy": Louis
Marshall to Joseph L. Magnes, September
5, 1913: Leonard Dinnerstein, "Leo Frank
and The American Jewish Community,"
p. 6, manuscript at AJA.

347 "a second Dreyfus affair": Mar-
shall to Irving Lehman, September 9, 1913:
Dinnerstein, The Leo Frank Case, p. 74.

348 "It would be unfortunate": Mar-
shall to Milton Klein, September 9, 19 13:
Dinnerstein, "Leo Frank," p. 6.

348 "There is only one way of deal-
ing": Marshall to Lehman, Dinnerstein,
The Leo Frank Case, p. 75.

348 "Frank's religion precluded":
American Israelite, September 26, 1913.

348 "great regret": Marshall to Adolph

672

NOTES TO PAGES 348-359

Kraus, September 27, 1913, Dinnerstein,
"Leo Frank," p. 7.

348 "may not only subside": ibid.

349 CELL NOW LIKE LIVING ROOM:

AC, August 28, 1 9 13.

349 My description of Frank's exercise
routine is drawn from despite death
sentence, AJ, August 28, 1913, and
frank looks to health, AG, Septem-
ber 1, 1913.

349 "There is no suggestion": AG,
August 29, 1 9 13.

350 JURORS JOHENNING AND: AJ,

October 1, 1913.

350 "Johenning had a fixed opinion":
Amended Motion for a New Trial, p. 135,
on File at the Georgia Department of
Archives.

350 "Henslee was prejudiced": ibid.,

P- 134.

350 My account of the barbeque for
Frank jurors is taken from plennie miner
is host at joyous barbeque, AG, Sep-
tember 14, 1913.

350 "I know that he's guilty":
Amended Motion for a New Trial, defense
affidavits, p. 5, on file at the Georgia
Department of Archives.

350 "I am glad they indicted": ibid.,

P-3-

351 "I believe Frank is guilty": ibid.,
p. 2.

351 "The charges that the jury": AG,
October 3, 1913.

351 "the charges are bosh": ibid.

351 "Henslee's prejudice": AG, Octo-
ber 6,1913.

351 My summary of the affidavits
recounting the exposure of Frank jurors
to pro-prosecution sentiments during the
trial is drawn from the Atlanta Journal of
October 4, 1913, and from the Amended
Motion for a New Trial, defense affidavits,
pp. 8-10.

352 "took hold of one of the jurors":
Amended Motion for a New Trial, defense
affidavits, p. 6.

352 "unless they brought in a verdict
of guilty": ibid., p. 13.

353 "hang this man on the dotting of
an 'i' ":AG, October 22, 1913.

354 "pronounced and continuous ap-
plause": ibid.

354 "I can give my opinion": AG,
October 23, 19 13.

354 "which the jury heard": AJ, Octo-
ber 23, 1913.

355 "I did not know how A. H.
Henslee": Amended Motion for a New
Trial, State affidavits, p. 23, on file at the
Georgia Department of Archives.

356 "As illustrating the attitude": ibid.,
p. 48.

356 "The club has among its mem-
bers": ibid., p. 51.

356 "because the said Mack Farkas":
ibid., p. 49.

356 "express himself in a way": ibid.,
pp. 23-27.

356 "of the same race and religion":
ibid., p. 40.

357 "I did not at any time": ibid.,
p. 28.

357 "It takes thirteen jurors": Reuben
Arnold, The Trial of Leo Frank, Reuben R.
Arnold's Address on the Motion for New
Trial (Baxley, Ga.: Classic Publishing Com-
pany, 1915), p. 9.

358 "that has reflected": ibid., p. 10.
358 "Argument was lost": ibid., p. 12.
358 "Was ever a case heard": ibid.,

P. 13.

358 "he saw his own life": ibid., p. 16.

358 "Left alone ... the negro spread
out": ibid., p. 15.

358 "They took his story": ibid.

358. "merely to prejudice": AG, Octo-
ber 25, 1913.

359 "If Leo Frank is hanged": ibid.
Inflammatory passages such as this one
were edited out of the version of Arnold's
argument published in book form. I have
restored them from the contemporary
newspaper accounts to show the full ex-

NOTES TO PAGES 359~370

673

tent of the bitterness among opposing
counsel.

359 "Your honor . . . the state's case":
Arnold, The Trial of Leo Frank, p. 28.

361 NEXT TRIAL MAY BE HELD: AC,

October 26, 191 3.

361 "improbable and ridiculous": AG,
October 27, 1913.

362 "If the verdict of guilty": AJ, Octo-
ber 28, 1913.

362 "The people were not aroused":
AG, October 28, 1913.

362 "the people in the streets": ibid.

362 "eloquent tongued": ibid.

363 "Your honor said": ibid.

363 "As God is in the heavens": AG,
October 29, 1913.

363 "What does Mr. Dorsey mean":
AJ, October 29, 19 13.

363 "the brand of Cain": AG, October
29, 1913.

363 "Dismiss from your mind": ibid.

364 "was greater than": AG, October

3M9I3.

364 "Impressed by the portentous-
ness": ibid.

364 "Gentlemen, I have thought":
ibid.

364 "Judge Roan has put": AG, No-
vember 1, 1913.

365 "Judge Roan displayed": the
Brunswick News as quoted in AG, Novem-
ber 6, 1913.

365 "It was none of Roan's business":
the Waycross Herald, November 5,

1913.

365 "Our Supreme Court has held":
Herbert Haas to Louis Marshall, October
31, 19 13, as quoted in Dinnerstein, The
Leo Frank Case, p. 79.

365 My account of the crucial meeting
at Temple Emanu-El is taken from the
minutes of the American Jewish Commit-
tee, p. 180, November 8, 19 14.

365 "the case of Leo M. Frank": ibid.

365 My figures on the cost of Frank's
defense are drawn from Dinnerstein, "Leo

Frank," pp. 9-1 1, and Dinnerstein, The
Leo Frank Case, p. 199.

366 "It would be most unfortunate":
Louis Marshall to William Rosenau,
December 14, 1914: Dinnerstein: "Leo
Frank," p. 8.

366 JEWS FIGHT TO SAVE LEO FRANK:

New York Sun, October 12, 19 13.

366 "Atlanta is probably freer": ibid.

366 "Prejudice did finally develop":
ibid.

366 "resolving to take no action": min-
utes of the American Jewish Committee,
p. 180, November 8, 1914.

367 My portrait of Albert D. Lasker is
drawn from John Gunther's biography
Taken at the Flood (New York: Harper and
Brothers, i960).

367 "He detested anti-Semitism":
ibid., p. 78.

367 "I thank you and your father":
Leo Frank to Albert D. Lasker, December
18, 19 13: Julius Rosenwald Papers, Uni-
versity of Chicago Library.

367. "When Mr. O. returned": Garrett
diary, August 26, 1915, p. 96.

368 "Your honors would not believe":
AG, December 15, 19 13.

368 "If there were errors": AG,
December 16, 19 13.

368 "The jury may have thought": ibid.

368 "There was nothing much
gained": AG, December 17, 1913.

368 "The court will proceed": ibid.

368 "The words of his judgment": AG,
December 11,1913.

368 "From timidity": ibid.

369 "It is not the office": Brief of the
Defendant in Error, October 1913 term,
Georgia Supreme Court, p. 95.

369 "We submit": ibid.

369 "Our contention in this case":
ibid., pp. 73-76.

369 "unless it appears there has been":
AC, February 18, 1914.

369 "The general rule": ibid.

370 "material and relevant": ibid.

674

NOTES TO PAGES 37O-379

370 "the condition of the body": ibid. 370 "No fixed plans": AC, February 18,

370 "This court will not interfere": 1914.
ibid. 370 "Ole Marster" AJ, February 17,

370 "calculated to prejudice": A/, Feb- 1914.
ruary 17, 1914.

14. Brightness Visible

371 "seemed to reach": NYT, March 6,
1914.

371 "My trial, my accusation, my re-
buffs": ibid.

371 "When I informed the solicitor":
AJ, February 20, 19 14.

372 "He knew the truth": AG, Febru-
ary 22, 1914.

372 "The solicitor, in his zeal": ibid.

372 Harris was merely offering an
"opinion": AG, February 20, 1914.

372 "had lost none of its strength":
ibid.

372 he "did not see Mr. Leo M.
Frank": AG, February 22, 1914.

372 "If they were at such pains": AG,
March 4, 19 14.

373 "I now state": AJ, March 4, 1914.
373 "Just stick to that": ibid.

373 TESTIMONY DOCTORED: AG,

March 4, 19 14.

373 split court denies .NYT, Febru-
ary 18, 1914.

373 "committed the Times": Garet
Garrett diary, courtesy Richard Cornuelle,
August 26, 1 9 15, p. 96.

373 EVIDENCE FOR FRANK HIDDEN:

NYT, February 21, 1 914.

373 retracts evidence: NYT, Febru-
ary 23, 1914.

373 WOMAN ADMITS SHE LIED: NYT,

February 26, 19 14.

374 FRANK CONVICTED BY PUBLIC

clamor: NYT, March 2, 1914.

374 "certain persons who are inter-
ested": NYT, March 4, 1914.

375 "in the Frank case to the finish":
NYT, March 5,1914.

375 detective promises: AG, March

4, 1914.

375 "work day and night": W.C.G
to Julius Rosen wald, March 4, 19 14
(Julius Rosenwald papers, the University
of Chicago Library Department of Special
Collections).

375 "Mr. Lasker's secretary": ibid.,
March 9, 19 14.

376 Approaching the bench: Frank's
statement and the reaffirmation of his sen-
tence appear in AJ, March 7, 1914.

377 "It is a terrible thing": AG, Febru-
ary 26, 1914.

377 "If I had been guilty": AC, as
reprinted in NYT, March 9, 19 14.

377 "I am obliged": AJ, March 15,
1914.

377 "The Truth Is on the March":
NYT, March 6, 1914.

378 "He was drunk": NYT, March 2,
1914.

378 SAYS CONLEY MOLESTED HER*. ibid.

378 "the strongest connecting links":
AC, March 6, 1914.

378 "I spoke to him": ibid.

378 "The statements of Mrs. Miller
and Mr. Lefkoff ': ibid.

378 "The truth continues on the
march": AC, March 7, 1914.

379 "It seems to the writer of this arti-
cle": Henry Alexander, "Some Facts about
the Murder Notes in the Phagan Case"
(privately printed pamphlet in possession
of the author), p. 7.

379 "We had an old Negro woman":
L. O. Bricker, "A Great American Tra-
gedy," Shane Quarterly, April 1943.

NOTES TO PAGES 379~392

675

379 new evidence: AJ, March 8,
1914.

380 "The simplest explanation": NYT,
March 9, 1914.

380 "They will have to change": ibid.
380 "old duplicate pads": ibid.

380 "I hope Solicitor Dorsey rests":
ibid.

381 "We'd printed all this stuff': Harl-
lee Branch, interview by his grand-
son, Harllee Branch III, in Atlanta, Octo-
ber 1962. (By courtesy of Harllee Branch
III.)

381 "Frank Should Have a New Trial":
editorial in A/, March 10, 1914.

382 "Frank should have a new trial":
NYT, March 16, 1914.

382 "The fact that Frank is a Jew":
ibid.

382 "Even among the people": NYT,
March 15, 19 14.

383 "The Frank Case": Jeff, March 19,
1914.

383 "For many years": ibid.

383 My account of Watson's animus
for Hoke Smith is taken from C. Vann
Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel
(New York: The Macmillan Company,
1938), pp. 386-89.

384 "desire to bring disgrace": ibid.,

P- 413.

384 "Who is paying for all this?": Jeff,
March 19, 19 14.

384 "Does the church invade": ibid.

384 "Does a Jew expect": ibid.

385 "Conley had nothing": NYT, Feb-
ruary 25, 1914.

385 "If the law didn't demand": AG,
February 24, 1914.

385 "the only way": ibid.

385 The best portrait of Burns's
conduct and demeanor while in Atlanta
appears in "How Will I Solve the Phagan
Murder Mystery? By Common Sense,
Says Burns": by Angus Perkerson, AJ
Magazine, March 22, 1914.

386 "I have no doubt": AJ, March 16,
1914.

386 "I know the people": AJ, March

23, I9I4-

386 "I will throw open to Burns": AC,
March 17, 1914.

386 he examined the crime scene: AJ,
March 16, 1914.

386 "easier than I expected": AG,
March 19, 1914.

387 "contact with abnormal people":
AJ, March 16, 19 14.

387 "savage instinct": AC, March 20,
1914.

387 burns is certain: AG, March 22,
1914.

387 burns says he can solve: NYT,
March 19, 1914.

387 Detective Burns Says He Soon
Can Prove: CTrib, March 19, 1914.

388 For an overview of Lasker's ef-
forts to recruit noted Americans to Frank's
cause, see John Gunther, Taken at the Flood
(NewYork:HarperandBrothers,i96o),p.88.

388 "protest against the execution":
NYT, March 26, 1914.

388 an innocent man: NYT, March

15, 1914.

388 "Frank, the highly educated": ibid.

389 "the strongest ever filed": NYT,
March 28, 1914.

389 "joined in the immoral conduct":
Dalton's comments appear in the extra-
ordinary motion for a new trial, filed with
the brief of evidence at the Georgia
Supreme Court, pp. 3 1-34.

390 "baby you ought not never said
anything": This and the following quota-
tions are from Jim Conley's letters to An-
nie Maude Carter, Slaton papers, GDA.

391 "beyond a peradventure": NYT,
April 27, 19 14.

391 William Burns's descriptions of
Mary Phagan's carefully cut undercloth-
ing constitute the fifth amendment to the
extraordinary motion for a new trial, filed
with the Brief of Evidence at the Georgia
Supreme Court, p. 65.

392 "After examining the clothes": AJ,
April 8, 19 14.

676

NOTES TO PAGES 392-402

392 "specialists on nervous diseases":
ibid.

392 "Frank was normal": NYT, April

9> 1914.

392 "acts of perversion": AG, April 12,
1914.

392 "I am not so hard up": ibid.

392 "The state of Georgia": AG, April
24, 1914.

392 "Police department today": Wil-
liam Burns to Adolph Ochs, April 24,
1914, William Breman Jewish Heritage
Museum.

393 absolve frank: NYT, April 25,
1914.

393 "Does the State of Georgia De-
serve":/^ April 19, 1914.

393 "stage-lecturing sleuth": AG,
March 21,1914.

394 "I asked Mr. Burns": Herbert
Haas to Albert Lasker, April 17, 1914,
AJA. By the date of Haas's appeal to
Lasker for more money, the Frank defense
had spent approximately $80,000, which

converted to 1999 dollars would total
$1,333,000. Before it was all over, Lasker
would put $100,000 into the fight, making
his contribution alone $1,666,000 in 1999
dollars.

394 "I hate to be compelled": ibid.

394 "Believe me": Albert Lasker to
Herbert Haas, April 20, 191 4, AJA.

394 "ought to give at least $10,000":
Albert Lasker to Louis Wiley, April 20,
191 4, AJA.

395 For an overview of Louis Wiley's
influence at the New York Times, see
Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones, The
Trust (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999), pp.
89-90.

395 Wiley mailed a copy: Louis Wiley
to Jacob H. Schiff, AM, April 22, 1914.

395 "During Christmas week": AG,
April 24, 1 91 4.

396 "One of the men said": ibid.
396 "mixed up in the situation": ibid.
396 "A fair trial is what I want": AG,

April 26, 1 91 4.

397 "Sentiment is as keen": Herbert
Haas to Albert Lasker AJA, April 30, 1914.

397 "How Much Longer": Jeff, April

23, 1914.

398 "just handing money out": AJ,
May 4,1914.

398 "a cowardly lie": AG, April 30,
1914.

398 "We want nothing to do with
him": ibid.

398 "On Thursday, April 23": AG,
April 28, 1914.

399 "Since the state": ibid.

399 "The Frank Case; the Great
Detective": ie# April 30, 1914.

400 "You not only expressed": Jeff,
April 2, 1914.

400 "Tom Watson is a lighthouse":
ibid.

15. Darkness Falls

400 horrible mistake: AC, May 1,
1914.

401 My depiction of Marietta's agri-
cultural, industrial and financial underpin-
nings in 1914 is taken from marvelous
march of marietta, AC, November 27,

1910, and MARIETTA — THE GEM CITY OF

Georgia, AC, May 10, 1914.

401 For a thorough account of the
Great Locomotive Chase, see Shelby
Foote, The Civil War (New York: Vintage,
1986), vol. 1, pp. 377-78.

402 "define his position": NYT, April

8, 1914-

402 "I have promised to beat you": AJ,
May 2, 1914. My portrait of Robert E. Lee
Howell is drawn from interviews with his
kinsman, Hill Huffman, on October 24,
1990, and February 3, 1992.

NOTES TO PAGES 402-424

677

402 "walked down the back streets":
AG, May 2, 1914.

402 "The great detective ran": Jeff,
May 7, 19 14.

402 "level-headed citizens": AC, May
2, 1914.

403 "Bob Howell's hand": NYT, Au-
gust 20, 1915.

403 "I do not care to go behind": AJ,
May 1, 19 14.

403 "If nothing added to nothing": ibid.

404 "the Jews" would get him: ibid.

405 "mixed up in the case": ibid.

405 "She knew Frank's relations with
women": ibid.

405 "Well, I've got Carrie Smith": ibid.
405 "live with Monteen Stover": ibid.
405 "improper proposals": ibid.

405 "not like other men": ibid.

406 "Defense Affidavits Forged": AG,
May 1,1914.

406 angry crowd: AJ, May 1, 1914.

406 "Oh, I merely want to ask": AC,
May 2, 1914.

406 "Do you profess to be able": This
question and the following pages of Q&A
between Dorsey and Bums and Arnold and
Bums are taken from detective burns

GRILLED BY DORSEY FOR OVER AN HOUR,

AJ, May 2, 1914, and burns is fiercely

GRILLED BY SOLICITOR, AG, May 2, I914.

410 "Judge Hill allowed": Herbert
Haas to Albert Lasker, AJA, May 2, 1914.

411 "You will take the rope": AJ, May

4, 1914.

412 "I can't tell a lie like that": ibid.
412. "They said Frank": ibid.

412 "Jimmy tried to kiss me": ibid.
412 "No trash, books or papers": ibid.

413 "personally positive": ibid.

414 "That was truth on the run": AG,
May 4,1914.

414 "I have on several visits": AJ, May

4, 1914.

414 "come out and declare": ibid.

416 "She broke down":A/, May5, 1914.

417 "Epps told us": AJ, May 6, 1914.

417 "who in the least understands":
ibid.

418 "Your honor, let this point": ibid.
418 "You could not hunt": ibid.

418 "Credibility of witnesses": ibid.

418 "familiar with the vernacular":
AC, May 7, 1914.

419 "three physical facts": AJ, May 6,
1914.

419 "Those notes show": ibid.

419 "I had expected": AG, May 6, 1914.

419 "The trial of Leo M. Frank": NYT,
[May 8, 1914].

419 "We are busy at work": AC, May 7,
1914.

419 "disgusted at the farcical meth-
ods": Louis Marshall to Louis Wiley, May
5,1914, A/A

420 "I know that the lawyers": ibid.
420 "I am afraid the whole business":

Samuel Untermeyer to Louis Wiley, May
5,1914, AJA.

420 "The Frank Case: What Does It
Reveal": Jeff, May 14, 1914.

421 "He did not waive": AJ, April 16,
1914.

421 "nothing but a trifling": AC, June
6, 1914.

421 "Our motion is founded": ibid.

422 Minola McKnight was knifed: AC,
June 15, 1914.

16. A Change of Heart

423 "published one of his hands":
NYT, August 2, 19 14.

423 "fronting on the ocean":
Leopold Haas to Leo Frank, July 24,
I9I4,AHC.

424 "He wanted my promise": NYT,
October 4, 19 14.

424 "For some reason": Mary Lou
Smith, "How, by Whom, and in What
Way Was Mary Phagan Murdered,"

678

NOTES TO PAGES 424-433

manuscript, 1929, p. 3. Carbon copy in
author's possession.

424 "something held back": AC, Octo-
ber 4,1914.

424 "He would not let me know": ibid.

424 "I have always felt": ibid.

425 Le Chiffre Indechiffrable: Berry
Benson to Daniel S. Lamont, U.S. Secre-
tary of War, October 26, 1896, Benson
Papers, Southern Historical Collection,
University of North Carolina Library.

425 "The harder the problems": Berry
Benson, Five Arguments in the Leo Frank
Case (Augusta, Ga.: privately published,
1915XP.2.

425 "with some interval of time": ibid.,
p. 7.

426 "If Frank had dictated": ibid.,
p. 6.

426 "there is not a white man": ibid.,

PP- 2-3.

426 My portrait of Colonel James
Perry Fyffe is drawn from "Col. Fyffe Laid
to Rest with Honors": Chattanooga News,
January 21, 1926, and "Death Claims Col.
J. P. Fyffe, Noted Soldier": Chattanooga
Times, January 20, 1926. In a January 8,
1914, letter on file at the AJA, Louis Mar-
shall wrote to Adolph Ochs regarding
Fyffe 's employment.

426 "This Chattanooga newspaper
man": Walter Smith, interviewed by au-
thor, July 8, 1986.

427 "Let us examine sacredly":
William Smith, "My Views as to the Death
Notes," frontispiece to introduction. On
file in the John M. Slaton Collection at the
Georgia Department of Archives, this 100-
page legal sheet document, compiled over
a several-month period in late 19 14 and
early 1915, presents the results of Smith's
independent investigation into Jim Con-
ley's involvement in Mary Phagan's mur-
der. Because its pages are not successively
numbered, I have broken the study down
by subject into the following three sec-
tions: introduction, main text and lan-
guage test.

427 "My father bent over": Smith,
"How, by Whom," p. 8.

427 "My father could not believe":
ibid.

427 "I can understand": AC, October

4, 1914.

428 "My mother screamed": Smith,
"How, by Whom," p. 8.

428 "forced to smile": William Smith,
"My Views as to the Death Notes," main
text,p.6,GDA.

428 "resolved to play": ibid., pp. 7-8.

429 "densely ignorant": ibid., p. 1.

429 "This man here, by these notes":
Hugh Dorsey, Argument of Hugh M.
Dorsey at the Trial of Leo Frank (Atlanta:
Johnson-Dallis Company, 1914), p. 65.

430 "page 936: 'Alright, I will do' ":
Smith, "Death Notes," language test,

P-I3-

430 "i don't care . . . but i did not know
that you": ibid., p. 14.

430 "I [was] swept into the truth": AC,
October 4, 1914.

431 "compellable witness": ibid.

431 the Smiths were left with 40
nouns: Smith, "Death Notes," language
test, pp. 1-42.

431 My account of the Smiths' work-
ing methods is drawn from a June 22, 1987,
interview with their daughter, Mary Lou
Smith Allen, who was present in the house
when they conducted their study, and from
numerous interviews with their son Wal-
ter, who spoke frequently with his father
regarding the process.

432 Take the word "long": Smith,
"Death Notes," language test, pp. 30-31.

432 the word "down": ibid, pp. 35-37.
432 Consider the phrase: ibid, p. 27.

432 "living in the South": ibid.

433 "P a g e 954 : k I went to ' : ibid, pp.
38-39.

433 the Smiths had enumerated: ibid,
p. 42.

433 95 percent were monosyllabic:
Smith, "Death Notes," main test, pp.
17-18.

NOTES TO PAGES 433-444

679

433 compound adjectives: Smith,
"Death Notes," language test, pp. 33-35.

433 "Any sane man": ibid., pp. 18-19.

434 "In a personal interview": ibid, p. 2.
434 "gave me a scratch pad": James

Conley, statement of May 24, 1913, BOE,
Defendant's Exhibit 37, p. 282.

434 "Dad told me": Walter Smith,
interviewed by author, June 12, 1987.

435 "Conley was wary": ibid. Berry
Benson refers to the fingerprint scheme in
a September 15, 19 14, letter to Leo Frank
on file at the AHC.

435 "I have never ceased": AC, Octo-
ber 3,1914.

435 "Frank Not Guilty, Believes Con-
ley's Lawyer": ibid.

435 conley is guilty: AG, October
3,1914.

436 CONLEY, NOT FRANK, CALLED

slayer: NYT, October 4, 1914.

436 "The unfortunate publicity": AC,
October 4, 1 9 14.

436 "Reading the official record": ibid.

436 "I know Daisy Hopkins": ibid.

437 "upon a comparative study": ibid.
437 "With the loyal and enthusiastic":

AG, October 3, 1 9 14.

437 "It is unnecessary": NYT, October

4,i9i4.

437 "his honest opinions": ibid.

437 "Attorney Smith's announce-
ment": NYT, October 4, 1914.

438 "The state stands": NYT, October

5,i9i4.

438 "Only a few days ago": AJ, Octo-
ber 3,1914.

438 "I haven't liked the way": NYT,
October 6, 19 14.

438 "I don't care what": NYT, October

4, 1914.

438 "The Leo Frank Case Campaign":
/e# October 8, 1 9 14.

438 "According to his own statement":
ibid.

439 "LET W. M. SMITH BE CAREFUL!":

ibid.

439 "to do me as [they] did Burns":
AG, October 8,1914.

439 "Will Smith is the worst abused":
H. F Sanders to Aldine Chambers, Octo-
ber 7, 1 914, Aldine Chambers papers,
AHC.

439 Mary Lou Smith Allen recalled
the anxiety in the household following
her father's public change of heart in
her June 22, 1987, interview with the
author.

439 conley's lawyer defies: AG,
October 8, 1914.

440 "Brings in Another Horse": Tom
Watson's attack on Walter Smith is from
Jeff, October 15, 1914.

442 "Among the important princi-
ples": AC, October 31, 19 14.

442 SHOULD A LAWYER BETRAY: NYT

Magazine, October 11, 1914.

443 "Regardless of public conjecture":
AC, October 4, 1914.

443 "Dad felt responsible": Walter
Smith, interviewed by author, July 8 and
September 4, 1986.

443 "If the decisions are adverse": AC,
October 5,1914.

17. Cause Celebre

444 "I want to tell you a few things":
This and the following quotations are
from Christopher Powell Connolly's letter
to Leo Frank, November 28, 1914, AHC.

444 My portrait of C. P. Connolly

The Social and Political Ideas of The
Muckrakers (New York: The Citadel Press,
1964), pp. 26-32. For more on Connolly,
see J. Anthony Lukas's Big Trouble (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), pp.

is drawn from David Mark Chalmers, 677-78.

68o

NOTES TO PAGES 445-456

445 a "nationwide sensation": New
York Herald Tribune, November 9, 1933.

445 Not only did Albert Lasker guide
Connolly in his coverage of the Frank
case, but he met with Collier's editor Mark
Sullivan to discuss the story: Albert Lasker
to Leo Frank, November 30, 1914, AHC.

445 "I presume": Henry Alexander to
Leo Frank, November 30, 1914, AHC.

446 "my 'Zola' ": Leo Frank to C. P.
Connolly, December 3, 1914, AJA.

446 leo frank loses: AG, October
14, 1914.

446 "In view of the nature": AC, Octo-
ber 15, 1914.

446 "I don't think you need": C. P.
Connolly to Leo Frank, October 20, 1914,
AHC.

446 "Frank's fifth attempt": NYT,
October 15, 1914.

446 LEO M. FRANK LOSES LAST FIGHT:

AJ, November 14, 1914.

447 "It would be trifling": NYT, No-
vember 15, 1914.

447 "Well, I had expected": A J, No-
vember 14, 19 1 4.

447 "An appeal to the Supreme
Court": NYT, November 15, 1914.

447 "not impressed": AJ, November
20, 1914.

448 "Frank made a motion": AJ, No-
vember 26, 1 914.

448 "I thought I deserved a chance":
NYT, November 24, 1914.

448 "Several times during the trial":
NYT, November 27, 1914.

448 "I am bound by the decision":
ibid.

449 "I understand that I am to as-
sume": ibid.

449 JUSTICE TO FRANK DOUBTED: ibid.

449 "From the lips of Justice Holmes":
ibid.

449 "If the man": Boston Journal, as
reprinted in the New York Times, Decem-
ber 1, 1914.

449 "Do the people of Georgia real-
ize": Louisville Courier-Journal, ibid.

450 "What is mysterious": NYT,
December 5, 1914.

450 "Is it not an amazing": Albany
Knickerbocker Press, as reprinted in the
New York Times, December 1,1914.

450 "Can it be that the law": A J,
November 22, 1914.

450 "That my vindication": ibid.

451 "taking hold of the matter":
Albert Lasker to Leo Frank, November
12, I9I4,AHC.

451 "One of the misfortunes": Louis
Marshall to Henry Alexander, December
1, 1914: Leonard Dinnerstein, "Leo Frank
and the American Jewish Community," p.
16, manuscript at AJA.

451 "The federal question": ibid.,
p. 18.

451 "paralyzed the judicial function":
NYT, December 2, 19 14.

451 "coerced by threats": ibid.

451 "Leo Frank as a Regular": Jeff,
December 3, 1914.

451 "Never before": ibid.

452 "What an arrant falsehood!": ibid.
452 "the great point": Jeff, ibid.

452 "pleasure loving Jewish business-
men": ibid.

452 "I expect to hear": Henry Alexan-
der to Leo Frank, December 4, 19 14,
AHC.

453 The first piece opened: Quotations
from Connolly's first article are from Col-
lier's, December 17, 1914.

453 In the second installment: Quota-
tions from Collier's, December 23, 1914.

455 "two or three dozen": Leo Frank
to C. P. Connolly, December 23, 1914, AJA.

455 "Another Campaign of Big
Money": Jeff, December 17, 1914.

456 "This matter involves": NYT, De-
cember 20, 1 914.

456 "We realize, your honor": ibid.

456 "Outside the state of Georgia": Al-
bert Lasker to Jacob Billikopf, December
28, 1 914: Dinnerstein, "Leo Frank,"

P-I3-

456 "If Frank's life is saved": Arthur

NOTES TO PAGES 457-465

68l

Brisbane to Albert Lasker, December 28,
I9I4,AJA.

457 lawyers unite: NYT, December
21,1914.

457 friend's plea: NYT, December
18, 1914.

457 Georgians urged: NYT, De-
cember 12, 19 14.

457 ATLANTA'S MOB SPIRIT: NYT,

December 6, 19 14.

457 Georgia's justice: NYT, De-
cember 16, 19 1 4.

457 innocence not now: NYT, De-
cember 2, 19 14.

457 "Anti-Jewish prejudice": NYT,
December 13, 1914.

457 "The Leo M. Frank case can be
reckoned": NYT, December 22, 1914.

457 "Why have the Times and other
publications": NY T, December 10, 1914.

458 "This matter has been tried":
NYT, December 20, 19 14.

458 "We abundantly disposed": AJ,
December 21, 19 14.

458 "I challenge the statement": AC,
December 22, 1914.

459 "an argumentum ad hominem":
Louis Marshall to Haas, December 24,
1 9 14, Julius Rosenwald papers, the Uni-
versity of Chicago Library, Department of
Special Collections.

459 "It is hard for me to see": Leo
Frank to C. P. Connolly, December 23,
I9I4,AJA.

459 "My dear Leo": C. P. Connolly to
Leo Frank, December 27, 19 14, AHC.

460 frank appeal granted: A/, De-
cember 28, 19 14.

460 frank wins appeal: AG, Decem-
ber 28, 1914.

460 "has never determined": NYT,
December 29, 19 14.

460 "The cell of Leo Frank": NYH,
December 29, 19 14.

460 "His face betrayed": AG, Decem-
ber 28, 1914.

460 "It is a long lane": ibid.

460 "I feel that I have a right": David

Marx to Louis Marshall, December 28,
I9I4,BU.

461 "In assuring you": Leo Frank to
Adolph Ochs,Afy7; January 5, 1915.

461 "I quite agree": Albert Lasker to
Leo Frank, January 4, 1915, AHC.

461 "I feel that the missionary work":
Leo Frank to C. P. Connolly, January 1,
I9I5,AJA.

461 frank is innocent: NYT Maga-
zine, January 10, 19 15.

462 "Do you care to make a state-
ment": Victor Morgan to Leo Frank,
December 26, 19 14, AHC.

462 "Few articles which have ap-
peared": Jacob Billikopf to Albert Lasker,
January 19, 1915, AJA.

462 "The Continued Campaign": Jeff,
February 4, 19 15.

462 "This campaign of lies": ibid.

462 "Are we to understand": AChr,
December 27, 19 14.

463 "The managing editor": Kansas
City Star, January 17, 19 15.

463 "Apparently nothing": Louis Mar-
shall to Leo Frank, January 30, 19 15:
Leonard Dinnerstein: The Leo Frank Case
(New York: Columbia University Press,
1968), p. 117.

463 "This court has said": NYT, Febru-
ary 26, 1915.

464 "a court may abolish": ibid.
464 "a Constitutional right": ibid.
464 "Is it your argument": ibid.
464 "The right to be heard": ibid.
464 "I am free to confess": ibid.

464 "if twenty courts had passed":
ibid.

465 "misapprehended the procedure":
ibid.

465 "any man under sentence": NYT,
February 27, 19 15.

465 "I do not so consider it": ibid.

465 "If the judges": Louis Marshall to
Henry Alexander, February 19, 1915: Din-
nerstein: "Leo Frank," p. 19.

465 "Unless we have a remedy": NYT,
February 27, 19 15.

682

NOTES TO PAGES 465-476

465 "no coercion": ibid.

465 "no public prejudice": ibid.

465 "an enlargement upon the truth":
ibid.

466 "I am hopeful of winning": Leo
Frank to C. P. Connolly, March 23, 1915,
AJA.

466 "Did Leo Frank get JUSTICE?":
The passages quoted from Arthur Train's
article are in Everybody's Magazine, March

I9I5,PP-3I4-I7-

466 "Like every other investigator":
NYT, February 24, 1915.

467 "The Leo Frank Case Still Rag-
ing":/^ March 25, 1915.

467 "Frank's allegations": United
States Supreme Court Reporter, October
term, 1914, p. 594.

468 "put we for I throughout": Merlo
Pusey: Charles Evans Hughes, Vol I. (New
York: The MacMillan Company, 1952),
p. 289.

468 "Whatever disagreement": United
States Supreme Court Reporter, October
term, 1914, pp. 595-96.

468 "I am very much disappointed":
AG, April 19, 1915.

468 "I will never suffer the death
penalty": ibid.

18. Commutation

469 "Gentlemen: After considering":
AJ, April 20, 1915, and AG, May 31, 1915.

470 "voice from the tomb": AG, May

3i,i9i5.

470 "fully confident": AJ, April 21,

1915.

470 "I am not asking for mercy": NYT,
April 22, 1915

470 "the opportunity for time": AJ,
April 21,1915.

470 "I am absolutely innocent": AJ,
April 22, 1915.

471 "may be handled by Governor
Slaton": NYT, May 3, 1915.

471 "The governor is not friendly":
James R. Gray to Leo Frank, November
27, I9I4,AHC.

471 "It is understood": NYT, April 30,

1915.

472 "It is an open secret": ibid.

472 "the merits of the case": NYT,
November 28, 1914.

472 "Frank shall not be a victim": ibid.

472 "You can just say this": NYTrib,
May 23, 1915.

472 "Frank would have a better
chance to live": Leonard Dinnerstein, The
Leo Frank Case (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1968), p. 117.

473 My account of Louis Marshall's
efforts to have the mandate in the Frank
case returned to the lower court at an
early date is taken from the New York
Times, May 6, 1915. Also of note are Hugh
Dorsey's remarks regarding the standard
30-day waiting period: AJ, April 19, 1915.

473 "We have just been notified":
NYT, May 6, 1915.

473 "Those representing": ibid.

473 "Again, I stand before you": AJ,
May 10, 1915.

474 "noticeably pale": ibid.

474 "I am fully alive to the fact": ibid.

474 "With the fixing of June 22": ibid.

474 My portrait of Geraldine Farrar's
high position in the musical and film
worlds in 1915 is informed by A. Scott
Berg's Goldwyn (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1989), pp. 52-54, 59.

474 "One of my great anticipations":
The account of Miss Farrar's visit is taken
from^C, May 1,1915.

475 she dashed off a wire to the New
York Times: NYT, May 1, 1915.

475 "Leo Frank An Innocent Man":
AC, May 1,1915.

476 "trying to stop the war": NYT,
May 20, 1915.

NOTES TO PAGES 476-482

683

476 DO IT NOW. SIGN PETITION: BT,

May 27, 1915.

476 Accounts of the pro-Frank peti-
tion drives in Manhattan and Brooklyn
appear in the New York Herald of April
25, 1915, and the New York Times of May
8, 19, 20 and 23, 1915.

476 The Times ran its pro-Frank edito-
rials on May 4, 5, 12, 17, 19, 23 and 26, 1915.

476 "I do not ask the liberation": NYT,
May 17, 1915.

476 Accounts of New York Christians
rallying to Frank's cause appear in both
the New York Herald and the New York
Times of April 26, 19 15.

476 My portrait of the pro-Frank peti-
tion drive in Chicago and the formation
of the "Leo Frank Committee" there is
drawn from the New York Times of May
13 and 18, 1915.

477 Alexander Brin's involvement in
the Frank case is summarized in Georgia
denies pardon in leo frank case; late
Advocate publisher exposed injus-
tice, Jewish Advocate, December 29, 1983.

477 "The undersigned believe": BT,
May 22, 1915.

477 "We want to say": BT, May 27,

1915.

477 Pleading ignorance of the evi-
dence, Taft rejected Rosenwald's plea in a
May 17, 19 15, letter (Julius Rosenwald
Papers, University of Chicago Library,
Department of Special Collections). Con-
nolly advised Frank that Roosevelt was
"not in a position to do anything" in a May
27, 1915, letter, AHC.

477 Slaton refers to the 100,000 re-
quests in his commutation order, p. 1, Sla-
ton Collection, GDA.

477 My account of the arrival of the
pro-Frank petitions in Atlanta is drawn
from the New York Times of May 18, 19 15.

478 "I beg you to spare": NYT, May
29, 1915.

478 "Commute Frank's Sentence": A/,
May 23, 1915.

478 "I stand for commutation":

Thomas Loyless to the Prison Commis-
sion, May 13, 1915, Slaton Collection,
GDA.

479 "millionaire Jews": Jeff, April 29,

1915.

479 "The letter from Judge Roan":
Jeff, June 10, 1915.

479 "What sort of man is Leo Frank?":
Jeff, April 29, 1915.

479 "In the official record": ibid.

479 "In behalf of Frank": Jeff, May 27,

I9I5-

480 "Woe unto God-fearing fathers
and mothers":/^ May 20, 1915.

480 "It is embarrassing": Jeff, May 27,

1915.

480 "The Governor of Georgia should
consider": /e#; May 6, 19 15.

480 My account of the scene at the
opening of the Prison Commission hear-
ings is drawn from AG, May 31, 19 15.

481 My portrait of Robert E. Davison
is taken from a November 23, 1996,
interview with 80-year-old E. H. Armor
of Greensboro, Georgia. My portrait of
Eugene Leigh Rainey is taken from Geor-
gia's Official Register, a publication of the
Georgia Department of Archives and His-
tory, compiled in 1927 by Ruth Blair, p. 29.
My portrait of Thomas E. Patterson is
taken from Lucian Lamar Knight, A Stan-
dard History of Georgia and Georgians
(Chicago, New York: Lewis Publishing
Company, 1917), p. 2218.

481 My portrait of William Schley
Howard is drawn from "Sidelights on
Georgia Politics," AG, September 9, 19 13,
and the New York Times of May 30, 19 15.

481 "It is the most precious docu-
ment": AG, May 31, 1915.

481 "Judge L. S. Roan was my
brother": AJ, May 31, 19 15.

482 "An intelligent man should real-
ize": NYT, May 30, 1915.

482 "Don't leave the Frank case": AC,
June 1, 1915.

482 "I have never made up my mind":
ibid.

684

NOTES TO PAGES 483-49I

483 "Our marriage has been exceed-
ingly happy": AG, May 31, 1915.

483 "In this article": William Smith,
"My Views as to the Death Notes," intro-
duction, pp. 5-6, Slaton Collection, GDA.

483 "I swear to you": ibid., p. 7.

483 "It can be shown": AC, June 1,

1915.

484 "The power to pardon": ibid.

484 "This case has not a parallel": ibid.

484 "Mass meeting Monday night":
AG, May 30,1915

485 "Let him hang!": BT, June 1, 1915.
485 "Mary Phagan was a poor factory

girl": ibid.

485 "should take its course": NYT,
June 2, 1915.

486 "A doubt as to his own action":
ibid.

486 "The voice from the tomb": ibid.

486 Frank's diary, aside from listing
the names of visitors, provides comments
on the weather, remarks about correspon-
dence, and a series of cryptic check marks
of undetermined meaning. The diary is on
file at the William Breman Jewish Her-
itage Museum.

486 "I did not write": C. P. Connolly to
Leo Frank, July 10, 1915, AHC.

486 "I spent fully two hours": BT, June

5,i9i5-

487 "He refers to himself as 'Frank' ":
BT, June 1,1915.

487 "There is nothing sorrowful": ibid.
487 "are optimistic": NYT, May 30,

1915.

487 "It is authoritatively stated":
NYTrib, June 6, 1915.

487 The best account of the June 6
protest meeting on the steps of Georgia's
capitol appears in the Boston Traveler of
June 7, 1915.

487 "Let Davison and Patterson": Jeff,
May 20, 1915.

488 'Lynch him?': BT, June 2, 1915.
488 "Is it possible?": BT, June 10, 1915.
488 "Tears flowed freely": ibid.

488 "Mr. Frank has nothing to say":
AG, June 9, 1915.

488 "The decision of the Prison Com-
mission": Leo Frank to Albert Lasker,
June 10, I9I5,AJA.

488 "had the highest motive": AG,
June 9, 1915.

488 "Governor Slaton now becomes":
AC, June 10, 1915.

488 Highlights of Slaton's governor-
ship are presented in his farewell message
to the Georgia legislature: AJ, June 29,

1915.

488 The summer social season at
Wingfield and the staging of The Gift is
discussed in "Leaders to Be Out in Force
to See Pandora's Romance": AG, May 30,

1915.

489 The opening of Slaton's hearing is
described in "Governor's Rooms and Cor-
ridors Thronged," AG, June 12, 1915.

489 "A man such as Conley": tran-
script of Executive Clemency Hearing,
p. 22, Special Collections, Robert W.Wood-
ruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta.
This transcript, which has never before
been quoted from in print, offers an unex-
purgated view of many sordid elements of
the Frank case and provides a fuller under-
standing of the evidence that prompted
Slaton to commute Frank's death sen-
tence.

489 "You have got this from Conley":
ibid., pp 32-33.

490 "An explanation may be given":
ibid., p. 40.

490 "I don't care to make": ibid., p. 41.
490 "When a governor is asked": ibid.,
p. 48.

490 "Now in all frankness": ibid., pp.

58-59.

491 News of the endorsement Frank's
cause received from Vice President Mar-
shall appears in AG, June 14, 1 915.

491 The decision of such powerful
journalists as Herbert Croly to join Frank's
bandwagon is noted in BT, June 8, 191 5.

NOTES TO PAGES 49I-5OO

685

491 "I have heard you say": William
Randolph Hearst to John Slaton, June 10,
1915, AG, June 29, 1915.

491 The best accounts of the second
protest meeting at the state capitol appear
in "Another Frank Meeting Held at the
Capitol," AJ, June 13, 1915.

491 In Fiddlin' Georgia Crazy (Ur-
bana: University of Illinois Press, 1987),
a biography of Fiddlin' John Carson,
Gene Wiggins gives a full recounting of
the composition of The Ballad of Little
Mary Phagan, pp. 19-45. According to
Wiggins, Carson probably performed em-
bryonic versions of the song shortly after
Frank's conviction. Yet because the news-
papers did not initially take notice, his
performance of it during the executive
clemency hearings amounted to the offi-
cial debut.

491 "Little Mary Phagan She went
to work one day": Wiggins, Fiddlin', pp.
35-36. As with many folk songs, there are
alternative lyrics. The version quoted here
was recorded by Carson's daughter, Rosa
Lee, on an Okeh record in 1925, ibid.,

P44-

493 "Your excellency, the record
shows": transcript of Executive Clemency
Hearing, p. 71.

494 "The state was ready": ibid., p. 89.
494 "Eliminate Jim Conley": ibid.,

p. no.

494 "the minute alibi": ibid., p. 109.

494 "to make some disposition": ibid.,
p. in.

494 "Why trembling": ibid., p. 126.

495 "I am not lacking in mercy": ibid.
This quote is from p. 53 of a long section of
the Executive Clemency Hearing tran-
script missing from the copy on file at
Emory University. The document was pro-
vided to the author by Hugh Dorsey, Jr.

495 The best account of Slaton's field
trip to the National Pencil factory appears
in "Gov. Slaton Inspects Pencil Factory,"
AG, June 14, 1915.

495 "What does it matter": transcript
of Executive Clemency Hearing, p. 133.

496 "Who but that knows the negro":
ibid., p. 149.

496 "Ladies carry their pocket hand-
kerchiefs": ibid., p. 266.

496 "I believe that someone under-
took": ibid., p. 187.

496 My account of the throng that
packed into the Wednesday session of Sla-
ton's hearing is taken from "Leo Frank's
Fate up to Governor, Hearing is Ended,"
AC, June 17, 1915.

497 "There was never blood": tran-
script of Executive Clemency Hearing, pp.

253-54.

497 "this was a disputed point": ibid.,
p. 271.

498 " 'The elevator hits the dirt at the
bottom,' ": ibid., p. 273.

498 "mathematical demonstration":
William Smith, autobiographical notes,

P-37-

498 "The detectives had Conley":
transcript of Executive Clemency Hear-
ing,^ 281.

499 "Primarily the trip": AC, June 19,

I9I5-

499 "I had two private interviews":
Smith, autobiographical notes, p. 38. Fur-
ther reference to these meetings exists in
an October 1, 19 15, letter from Smith to
Thomas Loyless, in the author's posses-
sion.

499 "To all appearances": AG, June 20,

I9I5-

499 "The judgment of the court": AC,
June 19, 1915.

499 Lucille returned bearing a novel:
AG, June 19, 1915.

500 "This case has been the subject":
Commutation Order, p. 1, Slaton Collec-
tion, GDA.

500 "who have not read the evidence":
ibid.

500 "if the courtroom manifested":
ibid., p. 3.

686

NOTES TO PAGES 5OO-5II

500 "Those giving expression": ibid.,
p. 4.

500 "It is hard to conceive": ibid.,
p. 7.

500 "Did Conley speak the truth?":
ibid., p. 11.

501 "One fact in the case": ibid., pp.
11-12.

501 "Conley was the real author":
ibid., p. 20.

501 "the only reason Conley had":
ibid., p. 19.

502 "The performance of my duty":
ibid., p. 28.

502 SLATON STILL DELVING: AG, June

20, 1915.

502 My account of Frank's transfer
from the tower to Milledgeville is taken
from the Atlanta Journal, June 21, 1915.
Several accounts, including one in the
June 22, 1915, New York Times, contend
that Frank was sneaked out of the tower in
an ambulance. But the concensus supports
the Journal's version.

502 "There were cars following us":
NYTrib, June 23, 1915.

503 "I had begun to think": AC, June
22, 1915.

503 FRANK'S SENTENCE IS COMMUTED:

AC, June 21, 1915.

503 "The larger part of the popula-
tion": New York World, as reprinted in the
Atlanta Constitution, June 22, 1915.

503 "Who will follow me?": ibid.

503 "All I ask": AJ, June 21, 1915.

503 SLATON GIVES REASONS.* ibid.

504 My account of the assault on Sla-
ton's mansion is drawn from "March to
Governor's,'MC, June 22, 1915, and "State
Troops Are Still on Guard," MT, June 23,

1915.

504 "John M. Slaton, King of the
Jews": NYT, June 22, 1915.

504 "We feel it best": Marietta Journal,
June 25, 1915.

505 "Governor Slaton, the Traitor":
MT, June 23, 1915.

505 "Whatever individuals may
think": AJ, June 21, 19 15.

505 "Had the Governor desired": AG,
June 22, 1915.

506 "element of existing doubt": San
Francisco Call, June 23, 1915.

506 "Governor Slaton feels": NYT,
June 22, 1915.

506 "a wonderful and horrible thing":
This and the following quotations from
Tom Watson appeared in Jeff, June 24,

1915.

506 "Once, there were men in Geor-
gia": ibid.

508 "There seems to be little doubt":
NYT, June 26, 1915.

508 "The prison is too secure": MT,
June 23, 1915.

509 American gentiles: NYT, June

24, 1915.

509 "You are hereby notified": Din-
nerstein, The Leo Frank Case.

509 "good offices": Hugh Dorsey to
Herbert Clay, undated document on file
in the New York office of the Anti-
Defamation League.

509 "Leo Frank should have been
hung": This line comes from a June 23,
1915, handbill titled "To the Citizens of
Marietta" in the files of the American Jew-
ish Archives.

509 "Preparations have been made":
NYT, June 26, 1915.

510 "He stood still for a moment":
Nathaniel E. Harris: The Story of an Old
Man's Life (Macon, Ga: J. W Burke Com-
pany, 1925), p. 363.

510 'The gallery was crowded": AC
June 27, 1915.

510 "I could see people on the stairs":
The Story of an Old Man's Life, p. 356.

511 "Governor Slaton entered": ibid.,

p. 357-

511 "Honest people may disagree":
NYT, June 27, 19 15.

511 "fine, big, upstanding South-
erner": New York World, June 30, 1915.

NOTES TO PAGES 512-516

687

512 "It was my duty": ibid.
512 "He told an interesting story":
ibid.

512 My account of the Slatons' visit to

New York is drawn from the New York
Times and the New York World of June 30,
1915, and the Atlanta Georgian of July 1
and 2, 1915.

19. Marietta

513 "so conspicuous": AC, August 18,

1915.

513 The date and location of every
lynching that occurred in Georgia in 19 15
can be found in W. Fitzhugh Brundage,
Lynching in the New South (Urbana: Uni-
versity of Illinois Press, 1993), p. 277.

513 "a matter of past history": AC,
June 29, 1915.

513 "I am fixed in my belief: ibid.

514 The basic facts of Herbert Clay's
background come from his only son,
Eugene Herbert Clay, Jr. I interviewed the
younger Clay extensively at his law office
in Sarasota, Florida, on February 26, 1987,
and again over a two-day period in Mari-
etta on October 31 and November 1, 1987.

514 At age 30, he had married the for-
mer Marjorie Lock wood: Montgomery Ad-
vertiser, January 1, 1911.

514 "He is wide-awake, genial": AC,
November 27, 19 10.

515 "Everybody was spoiled": Clay
Jr., interviewed by author, February 26,
1987.

515 Clay's participation on the Uni-
versity of Georgia football team is de-
tailed in the Atlanta Journal of October 8,
1901, and the Athens Daily Banner of
October 19 and October 27, 190 1. A typi-
cal account of his rollicking appearance at
dances can be found in the April 6, 1901,
edition of The Red and Black, the student
newspaper. The 1902 edition of The Pan-
dora, the student yearbook, lists him as a
member of the Bulldog Club.

515 "He was the most attractive man":
Zaida Clay Wood, interviewed by author,
June 14, 1994.

515 "A Social Success": The Pandora,
1901.

515 "He with the pretty eye": The Red
and Black, February 9, 1901.

515 "training violations": AJ, Novem-
ber 29, 1 90 1. Clay's pistol-shooting esca-
pade is mentioned in the 1902 edition of
The Pandora, p. 1 17.

515 spring of 1902 found him at Mer-
cer University: student index, Mercer Uni-
versity, p. 99, courtesy Mercer University
Library.

515 "The University ruined Herbert":
Mrs. Winter Allfriend, 95 years old, grand-
daughter of James Remley Brumby, inter-
viewed by author, June 7, 1990.

515 Clay Jr. described Lex Clay's dis-
missal from the University of Georgia in
his interview with the author on February
26, 1987.

515 Marietta resident Dorothy Haney
Smith, daughter of lynch party member
Lawrence Haney, recalled Lex Clay's ap-
pearance on the town square in an inter-
view with the author on June 1 1, 1991.

516 Clay Jr. described Frank Clay's
battle with syphilis in his interview with
the author on February 26, 1987.

516 dazed and disoriented: NYT, Janu-
ary 18, 1915.

516 "a little bit of a reputation": Dor-
othy Haney Smith, interviewed by author,
November 5, 1990.

516 "She had big bosoms": Lucille
Sessions Kappes, daughter of the Marietta
banker Moultrie Sessions, interviewed by
author, November 25, 199 1.

516 "Bolan told me": Mrs. Winter All-
friend, interviewed by author, June 7, 1990.

688

NOTES TO PAGES 516-521

516 "He was a powerful politician":
Judge Luther Hames, a 69-year-old Mari-
etta native, interviewed by author, March

9, 1987.

516 "just a likeable fellow": Lex Jolley,
an 87-year-old Marietta native, inter-
viewed by author, September 24, 1990.

516 "All those involved owed Clay":
Bill Kinney, associate editor of the Mari-
etta Journal, interviewed by author, Febru-
ary 23, 1988.

516 "The accused and the deceased":
Dorsey v. The State, Georgia Reports,
March 1907 term, pp. 228-37.

517 Bill Kinney gave an overview of
John Tucker Dorsey's legal troubles in an
October 7, 1992, address at the Marietta
Welcome Center monthly meeting, tran-
script in the author's possession.

517 he would tell cronies: ibid.

517 he won 10 consecutive murder
cases: Jasper Dorsey, interview by Thomas
A. Scott for Cobb County Oral History
Series, No. 16, at Kennesaw State Univer-
sity, October 4, 1989.

517 "He was a character": ibid.

518 "From time immemorial": AC,
July 4, 1915.

518 Fred Morris's role on the Univer-
sity of Georgia football team is high-
lighted in the 1895 edition of The Pandora;
Katherine Morris Hardy, Morris's grand-
daughter, provided additional information
on his athletic successes in an interview
with the author on December 16, 1996.

518 My portrait of Fred Morris's bus-
iness and legal activities is drawn from
the column Georgia politics news and
views: AG, June 30, 191 5.

518 In 1912, when two Negroes: AG,
October 1, 1 91 2.

518 when the Boy Scout movement
began: Mrs. Guy Northcutt, a 92-year-old
Marietta native, interviewed by author,
December 16, 1996.

519 My account of Bolan Glover
Brumby's illustrious ancestors is taken
from James R. Brumby, "Sketch of Life of

James R. Brumby," June 11, 1929. I was
given a copy of the manuscript by Mrs.
Winter Allfriend.

519 My portrait of the Brumby furni-
ture business is drawn from Sarah Black-
well Gober Temple, The First Hundred
Years (Atlanta: Walter W Brown Publish-
ing, 1935), a history of Cobb County, pp.
406-7.

519 The relationship between the
Brumbys and future United States Sena-
tor Richard B. Russell is detailed in Karen
Kalmar Kelly, "Richard B. Russell: Demo-
crat from Georgia" (doctoral thesis, Uni-
versity of North Carolina, 1979).

519 The Brumbys' connections to the
St. Petersburg Times and to the family of
the Atlanta Journal publisher James R.
Gray are discussed in "The Brumby Chair
Co.," a pamphlet distributed by the com-
pany of the same name in 1992.

519 Richard B. Russell's dispute with
the Brumbys is addressed in Kelly, "Rich-
ard B. Russell."

519 James R. Brumby describes his
falling-out with Tom Brumby in his
"Sketch of Life of James R. Brumby."

519 Bolan Brumby was "one of North
Georgia's most successful businessmen":
AC, November 27, 1910.

519 "He was wild and daring": Lucille
Sessions Kappes, interviewed by author,
November 25, 1991.

520 "Oh that murderous War": "Sketch
of Life of James R. Brumby."

520 "to get from under the U.S.
Gov't": ibid.

520 "The business manager of the Jef-
fersonian proposed": C. Vann Woodward,
Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1938), p. 393.

521 the ex-governor was among those
who conceived the mission: Bill Kinney,
interviewed by author, June 12, 1990.

521 "Judge Newt always came out on
top": Lucille Sessions Kappes, interviewed
by author, November 5, 1991.

521 Newt Morris's experience as

NOTES TO PAGES 52I-526

689

speaker of the Georgia House is summa-
rized in AC, June 30, 1904; his rise to judge
of the Blue Ridge Circuit is recounted in
"Judge Newt A. Morris Died Today"
Marietta Journal, September 22, 1941; his
work for William Gibbs McAdoo is cited
in AJ, April 21,1912.

521 Longtime Marietta resident Bob
Garrison gave an overview of Judge
Morris's contracting business in an inter-
view with the author on May 28, 1991. I
received further insight into the subject
from Morris's nephew, Paul Morris, in
interviews conducted on May 29, 1991,
and September 9, 1992.

522 he kept his canceled checks: 87-
year-old James T. Anderson Jr., inter-
viewed by author, June 6, 1990.

522 "I try not to hate anyone": Mari-
etta native Deveraux McClatchey, Jr.,
interviewed by author, October 18, 1988.

522 "a fourteen-karat son of a bitch":
Marietta native Harold Willingham, inter-
viewed by author, September 1, 1990.

522 Lancaster, California, historian
and anthropologist David Earle enumer-
ated Newt Morris's business successes in
Lancaster in an interview with the author
on October 21,1991.

523 Morris's work for the Antelope
Valley Real Estate Agency is mentioned
in an ad appearing in Antelope Valley
Times, August 1, 1889.

523 "in the cattle rustling business":
Earle, interviewed by author, November
27, 1996.

523 bushwhacked the man: LAT, July
18,1891.

523 Though badly wounded, Crane
survived: LAT, August 11, 189 1.

523 "he heard the clicking": LAT, Aug.
13,1891.

523 Morris was charged: The People of
the State of California vs. Newton A. Mor-
ris, Los Angeles County Court documents,
July 17,1891.

523 For five mid-August days: LAT,
August 15,1891.

524 there was sufficient evidence:
LAT, August 19, 1 89 1.

524 The dismissal of charges against
Morris is noted but not explained in The
People of the State of California vs. New-
ton A. Morris, Los Angeles County Court
documents. In a November 9, 1996, inter-
view with the author, David Earle asserted
that the general view among the citizens
of Lancaster was that Morris skipped out
on his bail.

524 Judge Newt sat Hardwick men
over Slaton men: AC, September 1, 19 14.

524 My account of Morris's role in
waylaying Slaton delegates at the 1914
state convention is drawn from Allen
Lumpkin Henson, Confessions of a Crimi-
nal Lawyer (New York: Vantage Press,

1959), PP- 49-58.

524 in 1913, at the Phagans' request:
AG, June 23, 1913.

525 "The power structure would not
touch": Judson Ward, interviewed by
author, June 20, 1987.

525 My portrait of George Daniell and
his jewelry store is drawn from the memo-
ries of many old-time Mariettans, among
them Lucille Sessions Kappes, who talked
about him in a September 4, 1992, inter-
view, and Otis Cheatham, who spoke of
him in an August 11, 1995, interview.

525 "into everything" in Marietta:
Mrs. Guy Northcutt, interviewed by
author, December 16, 1996.

525 My portrait of Gordon Gann is
drawn from the "Professional Cards" sec-
tion of the Marietta Journal, May 28, 1 915.

525 Black Newt ran the Cobb County
convict camp: AC, May 10, 1914.

526 "He'd pull the cages by team or
truck": Narvel Lassiter, interviewed by
author, March 31, 1992.

526 "If they didn't walk the chalk
line": James W. Lee, interviewed by
author, August 14, 1995.

526 sometimes also known as Whip-
ping Newt: Dorothy Haney Smith, inter-
viewed by author, June 20, 1991.

690

NOTES TO PAGES 526-532

526 When not at his day job, Black
Newt served as the foreman of his cousin's
Morris Construction Company: Paul Mor-
ris, interviewed by author, September 9,
1992.

526 "Black Newt had mules, wagons":
Bob Garrison, interviewed by author, May
28, 1991.

526 By 19 15, Black Newt was doing
well enough: Paul Morris, interviewed by
author, September 9, 1992.

526 "my daddy was running a liquor
still": Paul Morris, interviewed by author,
May 20, 1 99 1.

526 "They'd go to a man's office and
talk to him": Carl Abernathy and Myrtle
(Barmore) Abernathy, interviewed by
Patricia Raybon, February 14, 1973. The
record of the interview is in the possession
of Dr. Thomas A. Scott of Marietta.

526 "The organization of the body":
AC, August 18, 1915.

527 "no men of lawless character":
NYT, August 19, 1915.

527 The author learned of the reasons
for Robert E. Lee Howell's banishment
from the lynch party in interviews with
numerous Mariettans, among them Bill
Kinney, James T. Anderson, Jr., and Luther
Hames.

577 "No Jews ever pay": the Aber-
nathys, interviewed by Patricia Raybon,
February 14, 1973.

527 "something my father felt he had
to do": Dorothy Haney Smith, interviewed
by author, November 5, 1990.

527 "every 'lay of the ground' ": AC,
August 18, 1915.

528 My list of lynch party participants
was provided by Dorothy Haney Smith
and confirmed by her sister Golmer
Haney Wilson. It was further augmented
by Luther Hames, Lex Jolley and Bill Kin-
ney. The Mariettans named here were at
the forefront of the lynching effort, al-
though others also participated.

528 "whose worth was known": AC,
August 18, 1915.

20. Milledgeville

529 "Picture a frail figure": NYTrib,
June 25, 1915.

529 "nervous breakdown": MT, May

23, 1915.

529 "After that which I have gone
through": Leo Frank to Lucille Frank,
June 22, 1915, BU.

529 "It has indeed been an ordeal":
ibid.

530 "The main building is a credit":
MT, July 25, 1915.

530 "the Milledgeville farm is well
kept": NYTrib, June 23, 1915.

530 A history of the state prison farm
in Milledgeville and profiles of its more
colorful inmates appears in "Where Many
Famous Prisoners Have Served Time":
AC, June 29, 1913.

530 My portrait of Bill Miner is taken
from Carl Sifakis, The Encyclopedia of

American Crime (New York: Facts on File,
1982), pp. 487-88.

531 "quick, nervy": MT, June 23, 1915.

531 For an overview of the convict
lease system and its last days, see C. Vann
Woodward, Origins of the New South
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 195 1), pp. 424-25.

531 "Every time I went into the coal
mines": AC, August 8, 1908.

53 1 "pretty rough character": Louis H.
Andrews, an 86-year-old Milledgeville
native, interviewed by author, November

15, 1995.

532 "The warden is some fine fellow":
Leo Frank to Lucille Frank, June 22, 1915,
BU.

532 "I had a talk with Judge David-
son": Leo Frank to Lucille Frank, June 29,
I9i5> BU.

NOTES TO PAGES 532-536

69I

532 "The warden and his staff here
are": Leo Frank to Luther Rosser on July
1, 1915, as printed in NYT, August 18, 1915.

532 "I am in an environment": Leo
Frank to Julius Rosenwald, July 11, 1915,
AJA.

532 "have treated me white": Leo
Frank to Manning Yeomans, July 9, 19 15,
AHG

532 Frank thanks Lucille for a $5
check in a letter to her on June 25, 1915,
BU; he mentions his new cotton mattress
in a letter to Lucille on July 1,1915, BU; he
describes his new toiletry items in a letter
to Lucille on June 23, 19 15, BU.

532 "I shaved this a.m.": Leo Frank to
Lucille Frank, June 23, 1915.

532 Frank mentions his new cap in his
letter to Lucille of June 25, 19 15; he speaks
of his new watch and mirror in his letter to
her of July 1,1915.

532 "It's a beauty": Leo Frank to
Lucille Frank, July 1, 19 15.

532 Frank mentions the gift of cigars
from George Gershon in a letter to Lucille
on July 6,1915, BU

533. "Do not get all classical records":
Lucille Frank to Leo Frank, July 6, 19 15,
AHG

533 "my present physical condition":
Leo Frank to Luther Rosser, July 1, 19 15,
as printed in NYT, August 18, 19 15.

533 Accounts of Frank's work routine
at the prison farm appear in the Macon
Telegraph of June 23, 19 15, and the
New York Times of June 25, 1915. Frank
describes his chores in a June 30, 19 15, let-
ter to Lucille Frank, BU.

533 "I am sleeping like a top": Leo
Frank to Herbert Schiff, June 30, 19 15,
AJA.

533 "I wrote 14 letters this a.m.": Leo
Frank to Lucille Frank, July 5, 19 15, BU

533 "This letter is only the 16th": Leo
Frank to Lucille Frank, July 6, 1915.

533 "Your Letter of 6/28": Leo Frank
to Anne Carroll Moore, July 2, 19 15, in
Francis Clarke Sayers, Anne Carroll

Moore, A Biography (New York: Athe-
neum, 1972), p. 165.

533 "I wish to again assure you": Leo
Frank to Rebecca Solomons Alexander,
July 15, 19 15, William Breman Jewish Her-
itage Museum.

534 "how deep is my respect": Leo
Frank to Luther Rosser, July 1, 19 15, NYT,
August 18, 1915.

534 "The sunshine and atmosphere
here": Leo Frank to Luther Rosser, ibid.

534 "This is the breathing spell": Leo
Frank to Anne Carroll Moore, July 2, 19 15,
in Sayers, A nne Carroll Moore, p. 166.

535 "write your own story": Linton
Starr to Leo Frank, June 22, 1915, AHG

535 "write anything you want":
Charles Lincoln to Leo Frank, June 22,
I9I5,AHG

535 "Let me caution you": Herbert
Haas to Leo Frank, June 29, 1915, AHG

535 "It would be well for the case":
Leo Frank to Lucille Frank, June 24,
1915.BU

535 "g et Ochs to deadhead" the paper:
ibid.

535 "Remind Herbert to see Gray":
Leo Frank to Lucille Frank, June 25, 1915.

535 "Frank would feel cheated": Garet
Garrett diary, August 18, 19 15, courtesy
Richard Cornuelle, p. 90.

535 For a description of Reid's film on
Leo Frank, see Variety, July 30, 19 15.

535 My portrait of Hal Reid is
informed by Kevin Brownlow's Films of
Social Conscience in the Silent Era (New
York: Knopf, 1990).

536 "First you were talking": Rae
Frank to Leo Frank, July 15, 1915, AHG

536 "frank senior": Hal Reid to
Herbert Haas, July 4, 19 15, BU.

536 "You know, honey": Lucille Frank
to Leo Frank, June 24, 19 15, AHG

536 "Rest up and get back to your
poise": Leo Frank to Lucille Frank, June
22, 1915.

536 "It is a joy and pleasure": Leo
Frank to Lucille Frank, June 28, 19 15, BU

692

notes to pages 537-546

537 "This is certainly a lazy life":
Lucille Frank to Leo Frank, July 9, 191 5,
AHC.

537 "seances at letter writing": Lucille
Frank to Leo Frank, July 7, 1915, AHC.

537 "It has poured all day": Lucille
Frank to Leo Frank, AHC, July 6, 1915.

537 "The 'movie man' will be here":
Lucille Frank to Leo Frank, July 12, 19 15,
AHC.

537 "talk and show animation": Lu-
cille Frank to Leo Frank, July 13, 1915,
AHC.

537 "I just had my 'movies' made":
ibid.

538 "Everyone is so happy": Lucille
Frank to Leo Frank, June 24, 1915, AHC.

538 a reported typhus outbreak: AJ,
July 4,1915.

538 parole prisoners: AJ, June 30,
1915.

538 STATE FARM IMPROVEMENTS: AC,

June 31,1915.

538 "We will not attempt": AJ, June

30, 1915.

539 The Constitution ran a front-page
photo essay: AC, July 9, 1915.

539 "Georgia is too great a state": AJ,
June 30, 1915.

539 "Prison Farm Conditions 'Ab-
solutely Disgraceful,' "AC, July 8, 1915.

539 "deposited in buckets": ibid.

539. "criminal neglect": ibid.

539 "the deplorable conditions": AC,
July 1, 1915.

540 "We are going to vary": AJ, July 7,

1915.

540 "against the danger of typhoid":
Henry Alexander to Leo Frank, June 30,
I9I5,AHC.

540 slaton's treachery: /e/j? July 8,

1915.

540 "Was Sally [sic] the real com-
muter, after all?": ibid.

541 "Rich Jews": Jeff, July 15, 1915.
541 the "New York Hebrew Ameri-
can": ibid.

54 1 "Thomas Watson, the very embod-

iment": from Puck, as quoted in the Jeffer-
sonian, July 15, 1915.

541 "I note that one Nathan Straus":
Jeff, July 15, 1915.

542 "Do the rich Jews want to create":
Jeff, ibid.

542 "to take the whole crime":
Jeff, July 8, 1915.

542 "Conley is out and Conley is
poor": ibid.

543 "melted like snowflakes": C. Vann
Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel,
(New York: The Macmillan Company,
1938), p. 442.

543 "The Prison Committee": Leo
Frank to Lucille Frank, July 12, 1915, BU.

543 "My father believed Frank was
innocent": 77-year-old Rebekah Smith,
interviewed by author, December 21,
1996.

544 "Conditions at the farm are de-
plorable": AJ, July 14, 1915.

544 "an authoritative source": AC,
July 14, 1915.

544 "a leak" had occurred: AC, August
18,1915.

544 Nash wired Macon: AC, July 14,

1915.

545 "If anyone thinks": ibid.
545 "quiet as usual": ibid.

545 "The entire affair": MT, July 14,

1915.

545 "I am hoping": Henry Alexander
to Leo Frank, July 14, 1915, AHC.

545 "on their way to the courthouse":
Nathaniel E. Harris, The Story of an Old
Man's Life (Macon, Ga.: J. W Burke Com-
pany, 1925), p. 366.

546 "an overgrown boy": Lucille
Frank to Leo Frank, July 12, 1915, AHC.

546 "You know how comforting": Leo
Frank to Anne Carroll Moore, July 17,
1915, in Sayers, Anne Carroll Moore, pp.
166-67.

546 Leo Frank's scream: MT, July 19,

I9I5-

546 needed but one look at Frank:

ibid.

notes to pages 547-557

693

547 "Am I going to die?": AJ, July 18,

1915.

547 Not long before sunrise: MT, July

19,1915.

547 Reputedly responsible: ibid.

547 "the tool of others": AC, July 19,

1915.

547 the press erroneously reported:
MT, July 19, 1915.

547 "I only wish": AJ, July 19, 1915.

548 "We almost shudder": Garet Gar-
rett diary, July 19, 1915,^71.

548 Ochs . . . directed: ibid.

548 "The latest development": NYT,
July 20, 1915.

549 Frank "was treated over there":
Cherokee Advance, July 23, 1915.

549 "The fight between Creen and
Frank": ibid.

550 "Note: The butcher-knife used":
Jeff, July 22, 1915.

550 "You have a good chance": AC,
July 19, 1915.

550 "Frank recognized": AJ, July 21,

1915.

550 "Dr. McNaughton saved Frank's
life": A/, July 19, 1915.

551 "Frank's Condition Steadily Im-
proving": AC, July 19, 1915.

551 "To let the commission": AC, July
20, 1915.

552 B. H. Meadows, a fellow resident
of Canton, offers a thorough account of
Sam Cohen's travails: B. H. Meadows to
Governor Nat Harris, July 1, 19 15, Harris
papers, GDA.

552 "We believe it is time": ibid., July

7,i9i5.

552 "Governor Harris duly received":
F R. Jones, private secretary of Gov. Nat
E. Harris, to B. H. Meadows, July 10, 1915,
Harris papers, GDA.

552 For the background of Harris's
political indebtedness to Tom Watson, see
Woodward, Tom Watson, p. 434.

552 I owe my understanding of the ties
connecting Nat Harris to Herbert Clay
and Campbell Wallace to former Marietta

resident Bob Livolsier, whom I inter-
viewed on July 28 and September 4, 1990.
Livolsier undertook a painstaking study of
the many social and financial links among
various of the lynching brethren. Contem-
porary newspaper accounts underscore
Wallace's prominence in Marietta: AC,
April 25, 1915, and AJ, July 18, 1915.

553 Dorsey asked the legislature: AJ,
July 20, 19 15.

553 Governor Harris spent the night:
AJ, July 24, 1915; MT, July 25, 1915.

553 At the tubercular ward: AC, July

25,1915.

553 "Won't you please turn my papa
loose?": Milledgeville Union Recorder,
July 27, 1915.

554 "Creen, have you told your
story?": MT, July 25, 1915.

554 that, as John W Hammond point-
edly observed: ibid.

554 "He said he had heard": ibid.

554 vowed to ask the legislature: AJ,
July 25, 1915.

554 governor touched: AC, July 25,
1915.

554 GOV. HARRIS TO ASK $50,000: AJ,

July 25,1915.

555 "So far as what caused": MT, July

25,1915.

555 chairman Davison dismissed: AC,
July 26, 1915.

555 "Creen told Governor Harris":
Jeff, August 6,1915.

556 "I went into [Frank's] room": Har-
ris: The Story of An Old Man's Life, pp.
366-67.

556 the general assembly signed off:
AJ, July 29, 1915.

556 "Thanks be to God": Leo Frank to
Dan Lehon, August 6, 191 5, AC, August
18,1915.

557 "Leo is at the farm": Herbert Haas
to Lucille Frank, July 24, 19 15, AHC.

557 The handling of Frank's financial
needs is described in a letter from Herbert
Haas to Lucille Frank, August 2, 1915,
AHC.

694

NOTES TO PAGES 557-564

557 "Please, in the future": ibid.

557 "Remarkable": Variety, July 30,

1915.

558 publicity feature!: Motion Pic-
ture News, July 31, 1915.

558 Information on screenings of Hal
Reid's film appears in an ad in the New
York World, July 25, 1915, and in "Stirring
Pictures of Leo Frank Episodes in Loew
Theaters," New York Journal, July 24,

1915.

558 "There is a Moving Picture cir-
cuit":/^ August 12, 1915.

558 "Let the rich Jews beware!": ibid.

558 The time had come for "the peo-
ple to form mobs": MT, August 8, 191 5.

558 Frank describes the heat at the

prison on the last full day of his life in
his letter to C. P. Connolly, August 16,
1915, Harry Golden Papers, Public Library
of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County,
Charlotte, N.C.

559 "How do you view": Leo Frank to
Dr. Benjamin Wildauer, August 16, 1915,
AJA.

559 "T. W. . . . is not ashamed nor
afraid": Rae Frank to Leo Frank, August
14, I9I5,AHC.

559 "I am doing 'missionary work':
Frank to Wildauer, August 16, 1915.

559 Tuesday, Leo was scheduled: MT,
August 18, 1915.

560 Yellow Jacket Brown . . . was wait-
ing: AG, August 18, 1915.

21. The Lynching of Leo Frank

561 "exhausted every available en-
ergy": F. J. Turner to Lucille Frank, August
I7,I9I5,BU.

561 "dead certain that it was a mob":
ibid.

561 "two strong men grabbed me":
NYT, August 18, 1915.

561 "I saw they meant business": AG,
night edition, August 17, 1915.

562 "Come here with a match": MT,
August 18, 1915.

562 The report that the lynchers dan-
gled a rope in Frank's face and announced
that they intended to hang him over Mary
Phagan's grave appears in AJ, August 17,

1915.

562 "Damned if I go anywhere with
you": ibid.

562 "make for the swamps": AG, night
edition, August 17, 1915.

562 The fact that Lawrence Haney was
left behind at the prison farm is common
knowledge in Marietta and was conveyed
to the author in an interview with James T.
Anderson, Jr., on June 14, 1990, and
confirmed in an interview with Haney's

daughter, Dorothy Smith, on May 29,
1991.

562 Details regarding the initial re-
sponse of the prison authorities and the
lone uncut telephone line are drawn from
AG, extra #2, August 17, 1915, and NYT,
August 18, 1915.

563 Accounts of Fulton County dep-
uties patrolling the highways leading into
Cobb County from the south are taken
from MT, August 18, 1915.

563 Reports of gunfire at the Little
River and Frank's death appear in AG,
August 17, 1915, first extra.

563 My account of the circuitous route
the lynch party took to evade capture is
taken from an interview with Lex Jolley
on November 1, 1987.

563 "before your execution?": Associ-
ated Press, as printed in AChr, August 23,

1915.

564 The fact that Gordon Gann's car
broke down on the way home is well
known in Marietta and was conveyed to
the author in an interview with Bill Kin-
ney, February 23, 1988.

NOTES TO PAGES 564-57I

695

564 The fact that Judge Newt Morris
was in Alpharetta on the morning of the
lynching is reported in NYT, August 19,

1915.

564 "John Wood went out": Herman
Spence, interviewed by author, November

15, 1990.

564 That former Sheriff William Frey
tied the noose used in the lynching was
conveyed to the author in an interview
with Bill Kinney, September 16, 1986.

565 "with a calmness and dignity":
NYT, August 19, 1915.

565 That Frank wrote a note to his
wife that was later destroyed was con-
veyed to the author in his interviews with
Bill Kinney on September 16, 1986, and
reported in "Frank Tried to Write Wife,"
New York Journal, August 18, 19 15.

565 "I think more of my wife and my
mother": NYT, August 19, 1 915.

565 "In telling this story": ibid.

565 The story of the promise to return
Frank's wedding band to his wife is told in
AG, August 19, 1915.

565 That Judge Newt Morris pro-
nounced the court's sentence and kicked
over the table was conveyed to the author
in interviews with Golmer Haney Wilson
on May 29, 1991, Dorothy Haney Smith
on January 7, 1993, Bill Kinney on January
12 and June 15, 1995, and Dan Cox, execu-
tive director of the Marietta Museum of
History, on October 11, 2002.

565 The names of the men who first
arrived at Frey's Gin and the description
of what they found are taken from the
Atlanta Journal of August 17, 1915, and the
Augusta Chronicle of August 25, 1915.

565 "something was doing": AChr,
August 25, 1915.

566 "Yonder it is": ibid.

566 "undoubtedly flayed the air": AC,
August 18, 1915.

566 speeding mob: AG, August 17,
1915.

566 LEO M. FRANK KIDNAPPED: NYT,

August 17, 1915.

566 "hanging to a limb": NYT, August
18,1915.

566 "They swarmed the road": AJ,
August 17, 1 915. Winter's account was
later reprinted in Star Reporters and 34 of
Their Stories, edited by Ward Greene
(New York: Random House, 1948).

566 "like some religious rite": AG,
August 17, 1915.

567 "A horrible sight": AJ, August 17,

1915.

567 "Granddad told me a lot": Narvel
Lassiter, interviewed by author, March 31,
1992.

568 "Apache-like barbarities": NYT,
August 19, 1915.

568 "Every once in a while": AJ, Au-
gust 17, 1915.

568 "They won't put any monument":
ibid.

568 My account of Newt Morris's
dialogue with the crowd at Frey's Gin
is taken from Rogers Winter's report
in the August 17, 1915, Atlanta Journal
and from eyewitness dispatches appearing
in the August 18, 1915, Atlanta Constitu-
tion and the August 19, 19 15, New York
Times.

569 "Bring the body on, men": AJ,
August 17, 1915.

569 "as a man grinds the head of a
snake": ibid.

571 My account of Captain L. S.
Dobbs's decision to admit the crowd to
view Frank's body is taken from "Thou-
sands View Body": AC, August 18, 1915.

571 "without so much as a look of hor-
ror": ibid.

571 My depiction of the celebration
outside the funeral home is drawn from
"Frank's Body Hidden from Curious
Crowds," AG, August 17, 1915, and from
views of newsreel footage.

571 My portrait of the celebration on
the Marietta square and Fiddlin' John
Carson's performance there is taken from
"Fiddlin' John Plays": AC, August 18,
1915.

696

NOTES TO PAGES 573-581

22. Burial

573 "A world at war": NYH, August
18,1915.

573 "Always emotional": NYTrib,
August 18, 1915.

573 "Tot-tot! Leo is dead": ibid.

573 "a stain upon our country": AC,
August 18, 1915.

573 "a disgrace": New York Journal,
August 18, 1915.

574 "shameful" by-product of chivalry:
NYTrib, August 20, 19 15.

574 "promiscuous lynching": ibid.

574 "Every man . . . should be
hanged": NYT, August 18, 1915.

574 "a damnable outrage": NYH, Au-
gust 19, 1915.

574 "A more unspeakable outrage":
Akron Beacon- Journal, as reprinted in the
Jeffersonian, September 2, 19 15.

574 "mad with her own virtue": San
Francisco Bulletin, ibid.

574 "The South is barely half edu-
cated": CTrib, as reprinted in the Mil-
lidgeville Union-Recorder, August 24, 191 5.

574 lynch law: New York World,
August 18, 1915.

575 "apprehend the murderers": NYT,
August 18, 1915.

575 My account of Lucille Frank's
activities in the wake of her husband's
death is taken from the Macon Telegraph
of August 18, 19 1 5, and the New York
Times of the same date.

575 "It's over. It's all over now": NYT,
August 20, 1 91 5.

576 "I'm that boy's father": ibid.
576 "Leo Moses Frank": ibid.

576 My portrayal of the family's ride
from Pennsylvania Station to Brooklyn is
drawn from the August 20, 191 5, editions
of the New York Times, the New York Her-
ald and the New York Tribune.

576 My account of the scene outside
the Franks' Underhill Avenue home is
taken from the August 20, 1915, editions of

the New York Times, the New York Journal
and the New York Tribune.

577 My depiction of the frenzied
meeting at Cooper Union is drawn from
"20,000 Hebrews Mourn Frank in Cooper
Union": NYTrib, August 20, 1915.

577 "prosecute all the murderers":
AG, August 18, 1915.

578 "do not live in this country":
NYTrib, August 20, 19 15.

578 "not as far advanced": American
Hebrew, August 27, 1915.

578 "equalled in radicalism": undated
newspaper clipping, AJA.

578 "rebuke the State of Georgia":
BT, as reprinted in the Jeffersonian, Sep-
tember 2, 1 9 15.

579 "political ostracism": Milwaukee
Free-Press, ibid.

579 stopped stocking Coca-Cola: Jeff,
ibid.

579 "Georgia was not capable":
NYTrib, August 19, 19 15.

579 legislation to ban . . . Jeffersonian:
NYH, August 20, 1 91 5.

579 "left New York for Marietta":
NYTrib, August 19, 1915.

579 "I've been asked": NYTrib, Au-
gust 22, 1915.

580 "a mood of braced purpose":
NYT, August 19, 1 91 5.

580 "I remember waking up": Golmer
Haney Wilson, interviewed by author,
October 2, 1990.

580 My account of the lynch party's
use of George Daniell's fish camp is drawn
from an interview with Bill Kinney on July

25, 1994-

580 "The public will never know": AC,
August 18, 1915.

581 "as reputable a name": ibid.

581 "Leo Frank lynched here": NYTrib,
August 19,1915.

581 MARIETTA OFFICIALS DIDN'T

know: AJ, August 17, 1915.

NOTES TO PAGES 581-589

697

581 Georgia's shame!: AC, August

18,1915.

582 "which by the way, is the ninth":
AJ, August 18, 19 15.

582 "I am greatly shocked": NYT,
August 18, 1915.

583 "Nobody talks seriously": NYT,
August 19, 1915.

583 "There are of course": MT, August
18,1915.

583 despite having been awakened:
AJ, August 17, 1915.

583 "The word mob": NYT, August 19,

1915.

584 "Seventy-five percent": NYT,
August 18, 1915.

584 "the sodomite murderer": Jeff,
August 19, 1915.

584 "The less said about the matter":
Macon News, August 18, 1915, as reprinted
in the NYTrib, August 19, 19 15.

584 Flythe's accounts offer not only
the description of a man resembling Yel-
low Jacket Brown but also the description
of a bullwhip-toting lynch party member
who resembled Black Newt Morris: AG,
night edition, August 17, 1915, and AG,
August 18, 1915.

585 factory serial numbers: AJ, August

I9,i9i5.

585 returned . . . shotgun: AC, August

21,1915.

585 deputy sheriff William McKinney
was one of the party members: F. J. Turner
to Lucille Frank, August 17, 1915, BU.

585 "I do not see how": AG, August
18,1915.

585 "I am very glad": AJ, August 18,

1915-

585 would have been "suicidal": NYH,
August 20, 1915.

585 "not a penitentiary": AJ, August

I9,i9i5.

586 he would "exert every effort": AJ,
August 21,1915.

586 "intends to ferret the mystery":
Winder News, August 26, 1915.

587 "precision and secrecy": AC,
August 21,1915.

587 "The inquest verdict": ibid.

587 My account of the coroner's
inquest is based on the work of the
Augusta Chronicle's John W. Hammond,
the reporter who just a month earlier pro-
vided the only skeptical depictions of the
prison commission's probe of sanitary
conditions at the state prison farm. The
Chronicle was the lone Georgia daily to
staff either the coroner's inquest into the
Frank lynching or the subsequent grand
jury investigation.

587 "step from one of the automo-
biles": AChr, August 25. 1915

587 "came to his death": ibid.

588 "soft on lynching": Bill Kinney,
interviewed by author, August 9 and Sep-
tember 24, 1990.

588 his father walking out: Jimmy T.
Anderson, interviewed by author, June 14,
1990.

588 My account of the removal of
James T. Anderson from the grand jury
and the appointment of R. A. Hill and
Bolan Glover Brumby to the same body is
based on the handwritten jury list on file at
the Cobb County Courthouse for the July
term, 1915 (the new jurors were sworn in
September 1, 1915). The action was cor-
roborated for me by Judge Luther Hames
in a 1987 interview.

588 "It has been published": AChr,
September 2, 19 15.

588 My account of the grand-jury in-
vestigation is based on the reporting of
the Augusta Chronicle's John W. Ham-
mond, September 2 and 3, 19 15.

589 "Seven members of the lynch
party": Luther Hames, interviewed by
author, 1987.

589 "We have been unable to connect":
Herbert Clay to Governor Nat Harris,
September 7, 1915. Harris papers, GDA.

589 "The Cobb county grand jury":
Boston Post, September 5, 19 15.

698

NOTES TO PAGES 589-597

589 "The newspapers unite": Luther
Rosser to John Slaton, September 1, 19 15,
Slaton collection, GDA.

589 "the public mind": ibid.

590 "Thousands who had been our
friends turned on us": Herbert Asbury,
"Hearst Comes to Atlanta," American
Mercury, January 1926, p. 93.

590 My account of editorial meetings
at the New York Times in the wake of
Frank's lynching is drawn from the
comprehensive entries in Garet Garrett's
diary, August 18-26, 1915, pp. 90-97.

590 frank lynching: NYT, August
20, 1915.

591 My account of the Times'* attempt
to circulate its anti-lynching editorial to
Georgia newspapers is drawn from Gar-
rett's diary, August 21, 1915, p. 93.

591 "for the sake of the Times and Mr.
0.":ibid.

592 "As it now stands": MT, August 19,
1 9 15, as reprinted in the New York Tribune
of the same day.

592 "but a kind of intimidation": Gar-
rett diary, August 21, 19 15, p. 94.

593 "conduct aroused suspicion":
^JYH, August 27, 191 5.

594 My account of Charles Thomp-
son's background is taken from "C. W.
Thompson Dies, Editor, Reporter": NYT,
September 9, 1946; my account of John
Leary's background is taken from the files
of the Pulitzer Prize Selection Committee,
Columbia University, New York.

594 "a wonderful stump-speaker":
NYT, August 19, 1 9 15.

595 "not a big man physically":
NYTrib, August 22, 1915.

595 "Judge Newton A. Morris is the
hero": NYT, August 19, 1915.

595 "the story of the trip": NYTrib,
August 22, 1915.

595 The photograph of Judge Morris
pleading with the crowd appeared not
only on the front page of the New York
Herald on August 20, 19 15, but also on
the front page of the Atlanta Journal
on August 17, 1915, and in the March 23,
1929, issue of Liberty magazine.

595 " 'Newt' Morris's part": undated
newspaper clipping, AJA.

23. Recessional

596 "My heart aches with you": Mrs.
Sig Montag to Lucille Frank, August 19,
I9I5,AHC.

596 "many Christian women": Celeste
Parrish to Lucille Frank, August 18, 19 15,
AHC.

596 "My dear one lives": Lucille Frank
to Rebecca Solomons Alexander, Septem-
ber 15, 1 91 5, William Breman Jewish Her-
itage Museum.

596 The various remedies friends pre-
scribed for Lucille are addressed in letters
to her from Louise Hendricks on Septem-
ber 19, 1915, and Rae Frank on October 5,

I9I5-

596 "Get all out of life that you can":

C. L. Musgrove to Lucille Frank, August
20, I9I5,AHC.

596 "True to Frank's last request": AG,
August 19, 1915.

596 "If ever an object was charged
with tragedy": ibid.

597 "not enjoying the best of health":
David Marx to Anne Carroll Moore, Sep-
tember 21, 1915, BU.

597 "You can never kindle a fire": ibid.

597 "Strange to relate": Rae Frank to
Lucille Frank, October 5, 1915, AHC.

597 "The Wages of Sin": Jeff, August
26, 1915.

597 "Maybe when he reaches Hono-
lulu":/^ September 9, 1915.

NOTES TO PAGES 598-605

699

598 " 'Georgia's Shame' ":Jeff, August
26, 1915.

598 "Your Gold Calf stands discred-
ited":/^ September 2, 1915.

598 "Oh, Rabbi Wise!": Jeff, August
26, 1915.

598 "The assassination of myself ':Jeff
September 9, 1915.

598 FRANK VIRTUALLY CONFESSED*.

Jeff, August 26, 1915.

598 "Frank closed up": Jeff, Septem-
ber 9, 1915.

598 the negro told: Jeff, September
16, 1915.

599 "God forgive me": Jeff, September

30, I9I5-

599 "I never did think": Jeff, Septem-
ber 16, 1915.

599 ONE OF FRANK'S LAWYERS: Jeff,

August 26, 1 9 15.

599 "Mary Phagan was not fourteen":
Jeff, September 9, 19 15.

599 his . . . exposure of how the New
York Times: Jeff, September 30, 1915.

599 "You have blown the breath of
life": Jeff, September 2, 1915.

599 slaton or watson: AChr, Sep-
tember 12, 1915.

599 "To render a service": ibid.

601 "worshipping false gods": AChr,
September 13, 191 5.

601 "My heartfelt thanks": Lucille
Frank to Thomas Loyless, September 28,
1915, BU; AChr, October 1, 1915.

602 "to help you in your fight":
William Smith to Thomas Loyless, Octo-
ber 1, 19 15, in possession of the author,
courtesy Walter Smith.

602 "In reading the Jeffersonian":
ibid., October 2, 1915, carbon copy in the
author's possession.

603 A SHAME TO HAVE OUR LAWS . . .:

AChr, September 19 and 28, 1915.

603 Louis Marshall's efforts to con-
vince United States attorney general
Thomas Gregory to prosecute Tom Wat-
son are best detailed in Morton Rosen-

stock, Louis Marshall, Defender of Jewish
Rights (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1965).

603 "mingle freely": Benjamin A.
Richmond to Nat Harris, August 19, 1915,
Harris papers, GDA.

603 "the little jackass": Jeff, Septem-
ber 23, 1915.

603 "the near-Catholic editor": Jeff,
October 28, 1915.

603 "You tell Jack Slaton": Jeff, Sep-
tember 23, 1915.

603 "the carpetbagger brotherhood":
/<?$ October 7,1915.

604 "fusillade on the Jeffersonian":
ibid.

604 "They have simply reopened the
Frank case": ibid.

604 "We are with Tom Watson": AChr,
October 7,1915.

604 "I tell the Attorney General": C.
Vann Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian
Rebel (New York: The Macmillan Com-
pany, 1938), p. 447.

604 "The gentleman stated to me that
he had just come from Mr. Watson":
Nathaniel E. Harris, The Story of an Old
Man's Life (Macon, Ga.: J. W Burke Com-
pany, 1925), pp. 240-41.

604 "expressed his gratification.": ibid.

604 " 'What kind of politicians' ": ibid.

605 "Our Governor is certainly a won-
der": Luther Rosser to John Slaton, Sep-
tember 1, 1915, Slaton collection, GDA.

605 The state's entire congressional
delegation, save for Hardwick, asked Gre-
gory to drop the case: Woodward, Tom
Watson, p. 448.

605 "no fund which could be legally
applied": Clifford Walker to Nat Harris,
August 24, 1915, Harris papers, GDA. The
state's decision not to pursue the lynchers
ended all possibilities of any arrests, as in
1915, the Federal Bureau, of Investigation
had yet to be founded.

605 The release of the $30,000 in
prison construction funds is recounted in

700

NOTES TO PAGES 605-609

the Milledgeville Union Recorder, Septem-
ber 7,1915.

605 "The new 'L' to the main build-
ing": ibid.

605 "a set of silverware for 'a job
well done' ": Dorothy Haney Smith, inter-
viewed by author, November 5, 1990.

605 "sectional and racial hatred": Jeff,
September 2, 1915.

606 "another Ku Klux Klan may be
organized": ibid.

606 Nathan Bedford Forrest: For a
succinct account of the reign of Forrest's
original Klan, see Wyn Craig Wade, The
Fiery Cross (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987), pp. 31-33.

606 "Forty years after Reconstruc-
tion": Charlton Moseley: "Latent Klanism
in Georgia, 1890-1915," Georgia Histori-
cal Quarterly (fall 1972), pp. 365-86.

606 My portrait of the events sur-
rounding the premiere of The Birth of A
Nation is drawn from Wade, The Fiery
Cross, pp. 1 19-39, anc * David M. Chalmers,
Hooded Americanism (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1991), pp. 22-27.

606 "If there is a greater picture":
Wade, The Fiery Cross, p. 132.

606 "like writing history with light-
ning": ibid., p. 126.

606 My portrait of William Joseph
Simmons is drawn from Charlton Mose-
ley's excellent "William Joseph Simmons:
The Unknown Wizard," Atlanta History
(spring 1993).

606 The Klan's reorganization was
reported under the headline new ku-
klux klan gets charter: AC, Decem-
ber 7,1915.

607 My account of the modern Klan's
first cross burning is based on my Septem-
ber 29, 1990, interview with Imperial Wiz-
ard James Venable, who was present that
night, and on the reporting of Wyn Craig
Wade in The Fiery Cross, pp. 144-45.

607 "Suddenly I struck a match":
Wade, The Fiery Cross, p. 145.

607 "We became introverted": Alan

Marcus, interviewed by author, February
26, 1987.

608 "the closer the Temple got to the
churches": Eli N. Evans, The Provincials
(New York: Atheneum, 1973,) p. 278.

608 "had a profound impact on
Marx": ibid., p. 277.

608 "blame the Orthodox commu-
nity": ibid., p. 278.

608 My portrait of Samuel Boorstin's
flight from Atlanta is based on a May 4,
2002, interview with his son Daniel and
daughter-in-law, Ruth.

608 she had considered going to
Chicago: O. C. Miller, American School
of Correspondences, Chicago, to Lucille
Frank, October 22, 1915, Leo Frank Col-
lection, AHC.

608 My account of Lucille Frank's
move to Memphis is based on an October
16, 1986, letter to the author from her
nephew Alan Marcus, and on "Mrs. Leo
Frank to Open Store": Brooklyn Eagle,
February 9, 19 16.

609 "My dear child Lucille": Rae
Frank to Lucille Frank, February 9, 19 16,
AHC.

609 "there is no organized force":
Luther Rosser to John Slaton, September
1, 1915, Slaton collection, GDA.

609 Following the war, the Slatons
returned to Atlanta. In 1932, Slaton ran
for the United States Senate only to be
resoundingly defeated. Yet despite the fact
that Georgians as a whole never forgave
him for commuting Frank's sentence, the
former governor remained a popular fig-
ure around Atlanta, practicing law and
supervising the state bar exam through the
early 1950s. He died on January 11, 1955.

609 My account of Thomas Loyless's
postlynching travails is taken from Edward
J. Cashin, "Thomas W Loyless, Responsi-
ble Journalist," Richmond County History
9, no. 1 (winter 1977), pp. 18-28.

609 My portrait of Loyless's work at
Warm Springs and his part in supervising
the treatment of Franklin D. Roosevelt is

NOTES TO PAGES 6lO-6l5

701

taken from Cashin, "Thomas W. Loyless"
and Ted Morgan, FDR (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1985), pp. 274-76.

610 My account of William Smith's dif-
ficulties is drawn from his autobiographi-
cal notes and from interviews with his son
Walter, on July 8 and September 4, 1986,
and June 22 and October 1, 1987, and with
his daughter, Mary Lou Smith Allen, on
June 22, 1987.

610 "trying to make a living": Walter
Smith, interviewed by author, July 8, 1986.

610 "he was so disheartened": Walter
Smith, interviewed by author, June 22,
1987.

610 "A major part": Walter Smith, in-
terviewed by author, September 4, 1986.

610 "Dad needed the job": Walter
Smith, interviewed by author, September
9, 1986.

610 "The people he worked with
thought he was a timekeeper": Mary Lou
Smith Allen, interviewed by author, June
22, 1987.

611 "Dad decided that he'd trained as
a lawyer": Walter Smith, interviewed by
author, July 8, 1986.

611 "When Mother got off the train":
Mary Lou Smith Allen, interviewed by
author, June 22, 1987.

611 "It all tied in to the Frank case":
ibid.

612 "disorderly house": AG, Novem-
ber 1, 1915.

612 "instead of drawing a fine": AJ,
November 1,1915.

612 "Don't write me up": AG, Novem-
ber 1, 1915.

612 "bride beating": AJ, November 7,

1915.

612 "Conley is 'in again' ": AC, Febru-
ary 13, 1916.

612 "spent more time in jail": Greens-
boro [Ga.] Herald-Journal, August 2,
1918, William Breman Jewish Heritage
Museum.

612 "He figures the governor will
pardon him": Savannah Morning News,

February 25, 1919. Accounts of Conley's
conviction also appear in the Atlanta Con-
stitution for the same day and in the previ-
ous day's Atlanta Georgian.

613 "the smartest criminal": Greens-
boro Herald-Journal, August 2, 19 18.

613 My account of Watson's decision
to endorse Dorsey is taken from Wood-
ward, Tom Watson, p. 448.

613 "the fearless Solicitor General":
ibid, p. 449.

613 "The attitude of the Hebrews":
Rosenstock, Louis Marshall, p. 95.

613 "He is the juror": Woodward,
Tom Watson, p. 449.

613 My presentation of the 1920 sen-
ate race between Watson and Dorsey is
taken from Woodward, Tom Watson, pp.

470-73.

614 "A Statement as to the Negro in
Georgia": this remarkable 24-page docu-
ment, issued on April 21, 1921, was pro-
vided to me by Hugh Dorsey, Jr. It is also
on file at the Georgia Department of
Archives.

614 Dorsey 's campaign against lynch-
ing was endorsed by such Georgians as
Rabbi David Marx at a conference in
Atlanta on April 22, 1 921. Their resolution
was attached to Dorsey's statement as an
addendum.

614 DORSEY PEONAGE PAMPHLET: AC,

May 22, 192 1.

614 "I took the Herndon case": Elbert
Tuttle, interviewed by author, June 24,
1987.

614 For an overview of the Herndon
case and of Tuttle 's role in the desegrega-
tion of southern schools, see Jack Bass,
Unlikely Heroes (New York: Touchstone
Books, 1981).

615 "Henry Ford is editing a paper":
Congressional Record, Senate, 1921, pp.
8055-56.

615 Watson's support for Imperial
Wizard Simmons during Congressional
questioning is discussed in Andrew S.
Rice, The KuKlux Klan in American Poll-

702

NOTES TO PAGES 615-619

tics (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs
Press, 1962), pp. 59-60.

615 "the King of the Ku Klux": ibid.,
p. 60.

615 My account of Watson's death and
funeral is taken from Woodward, Tom
Watson, p. 486.

615 My depiction of the Klan's rise to
power in Atlanta during the 1920s is drawn
from Wade, The Fiery Cross, pp. 153-66.

615 The best account of the Klan's
role in the campaign of William Gibbs
McAdoo at the 1924 Democratic Party
national convention appears in Arnold S.
Rice, The Ku Klux Klan in American Poli-
tics, pp. 74-84.

616 "Fist-fights were started": ibid.
616 Judge Newt Morris's role at the

1924 Democratic Party national conven-
tion was described for me in a November
1, 1987, interview with Herbert Clay's for-
mer law clerk, Lex Jolley, who recalled lis-
tening to the convention proceedings on
the radio. Further details can be found in
"Georgia Beats Klan Plank," NYT, June
29, 1924, which describes Morris's service
on the committee on resolutions.

616 "The only way": Tom Shelton, in-
terviewed by author, November 12, 199 1.

616 "We shared Christmases": Tom
Shelton, interviewed by author, Novem-
ber 2, 1993.

616 "that wasn't talked about": Clar-
ence Feibelman, interviewed by author,
November 29, 1984.

616 "The Jewish community was
scared": Bea Haas, interviewed by author,
June 20, 1986.

616 "My father never wanted": Joseph
Haas, interviewed by author, June 20,
1986.

617 "The attitude of the older Jews":
Charles Wittenstein, interviewed by
author, November 26, 1984.

617 Pierre Van Paassen recounts his
attempts to reignite interest in the Frank
case in his To Number Our Days (New
York: Scribner, 1964), pp. 237-38.

618 "one of the few people": Arthur
Powell, / Can Go Home Again (Chapel
Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina
Press, 1943), p. 291.

618 My account of Max Goldstein's
destruction of Arthur Powell's allegedly
exculpatory evidence is drawn from the
correspondence of Max Goldstein and
Irving Engle, Harry Golden Papers, Char-
lotte-McKlenburg Library, Charlotte, NC.
On August 5, 1963, Goldstein wrote Engle:
"I accept full responsibility for advising
Judge Powell to destroy the memoran-
dum ... it would have merely resulted in
renewing the agitation."

618 Henry Alexander's extensive, on-
going file on the Frank case was loaned to
me by his son and namesake, University
of Oregon philosophy professor Henry
Alexander, Jr. It is now in the possession
of the William Breman Jewish Heritage
Museum in Atlanta.

618 the indictment of Monteen Stover:
AJ, February 2, 1921.

618 Britt Craig: AC, March 19, 1919.

618 the death of Frank's mother: NYT
January 2, 1925.

618 a full pardon to William Creen: AJ
and AG, August 1, 1933.

619 Henry Alexander, Jr., spoke of
his father's refusal to attend the fiftieth
reunion of his University of Georgia class
in an interview with the author, October
31,1988.

619 "Frank, non-resident": Sarah
Blackwell Gober Temple, The First Hun-
dred Years (Atlanta: Walter W Brown
Publishing, 1935), p. 481.

619 Mrs. Lex Jolley, a Marietta native
whose grandfather lived near Frey's Gin,
spoke of the whitewashing of the lynching
tree in an interview with the author on
September 24, 1990. Bill Kinney recalled
the framed sleeve of Frank's nightshirt on
display at the Stonewall Court in an inter-
view with the author on February 23, 1988.

619 "You can't imagine": Bill Kinney,
interviewed by author, August 18, 1990.

NOTES TO PAGES 619-623

703

619 For a thorough overview of Judge
Newt Morris's later career, see "Judge
Newt A. Morris Died Today," Marietta
Journal, September 22, 1941. My account
of his later days was further enriched by a
September 12, 1995, interview with his
daughter, Mrs. Sara Kennedy.

619 "You may save him now": NYT,
October 7, 1934.

619 My account of John Tbcker
Dorsey's later career is informed by the
interview his son, Jasper, gave to Dr.
Thomas Scott as part of the Cobb County
Oral History Series at Kennesaw State
University. Dorsey's political successes are
detailed in "Sam Welsch, John Dorsey
Win," in the Marietta Journal, Septem-
ber 12, 1940. I also learned much on the
topic in a March 9, 1987, interview with
Dorsey's former partner, Superior Court
judge Luther Hames.

620 Longtime Marietta resident Bob
Garrison discussed the role John Tbcker
Dorsey's fish camp played in the lives of
Marietta men in an interview with the
author on May 28, 1991.

620 My portrait of the Brumby fam-
ily's subsequent successes is drawn from
interviews with Bill Kinney on May 5 and
August 8, 1992.

620 Luther Hames discussed the
county's failure to prosecute R. A. Hill for
murder in his interview with the author on
March 9, 1987. Dorothy Haney Smith dis-
cussed the murder itself in an interview
with the author on July 7, 1993.

620 Bill Kinney spoke of Lawrence
Haney's later life in interviews with the
author on October 17, 1991, August 8,
1992, and September 13, 1995.

621 "There was one thing": Bill Kin-
ney, interviewed by author, September 13,

1995-

621 My account of John Wood's rise to
political power in Georgia is drawn largely
from interviews with his former partner,
Herman Spence, on November 5 and
November 15, 1990. Further details are

taken from "John S.Wood Dies at 83," AC,
September 13, 1968. In a January 7, 1993,
interview, Dorothy Haney Smith told me,
"I verified that the last name on the list [of
lynch party members] was Wood. It was
alphabetical."

621 My account of Wood's rise to
national power in the United States Con-
gress, his role on the House Un-American
Activities Committee and his relation-
ship with Richard Nixon is informed by
Walter Goodman, The Committee (New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968),
pp. 173-74, I 9°» J97 an d 272-73. Also
helpful is Stefan Kanfer, A Journal of
the Plague Years (New York: Atheneum,
1973), PP- 127, 141-42, 196-97.

621 "I am not willing ... to bring bad
trouble to people": Kanfer, Plague Years,
pp. 196-97-

621 Herbert Clay's alleged assault on
Bobby Lou Greer is recounted in the
Atlanta Georgian of May 20, 19 17.

622 woman uses horsewhip: ibid.

622 My account of Clay's escapades at
Dave Jarrett's Hotel is drawn from my
interview with Luther Hames on March 9,
1987.

623 "were terrible enemies": ibid.
623 "Mr. Lock wood was the darling":

Bob Gamble, interviewed by author, Au-
gust 27, 1993.

623 My portrait of Clay's divorce and
decline is taken from interviews with
Eugene Herbert Clay, Jr., on February 26,
1987, Luther Hames on March 9, 1987,
Lex Jolley on September 24, 1990, and Bill
Kinney on February 23, 1988.

623 "I have befouled": Luther Hames,
interviewed by author, March 9, 1987.

623 Details of the Annie Gober car
wreck appear on the front page of the
Cobb County Times, January 11, 1923.

623 "fatty degeneration of the heart":
Cobb County Times, June 28, 1923.

623 "Clay was killed": Luther Hames,
interviewed by author, March 9, 1987.

623 "covered up everything": Eugene

704

NOTES TO PAGES 624-626

Herbert Clay, interviewed by author, Feb-
ruary 26, 1987.

624 "was not thought to be related":
Guide to Marietta City Cemetery by Curt
Ratledge (Marietta: privately printed,
1992), p. 43.

624 "everyone involved suffered":
Deveraux McClatchey, Jr., interviewed by
author, October 18, 1988.

624 "He was kind of scared": Otis
Cheatham, interviewed by author, August

u,i995.

624 My account of John Wood's failed
nomination to the Subversive Activities
Control Board is drawn from the tran-
scripts of the confidential hearings held by
the Subcommittee of the Committee on
the Judiciary of the United States Senate
on May 10, 1955, and June 21, 1955. Both
documents are on file at the National
Archives in Washington, D.C. Also helpful
in understanding the proceedings were
accounts appearing in the New York Times
on March 5, May 1, and August 5, 1955.

624 "like illegal whiskey drinking":
May 10, 1955, hearing by the Subcommit-
tee of the Committee on the Judiciary of
the United States Senate, p. 27. This com-
ment was originally reported by syndi-
cated columnist Drew Pearson.

624 "Five thousand lynchings": May
10, 1955, hearing by the Subcommittee of
the Committee on the Judiciary of the
United States Senate, pp. 27-28.

624 "a racist and an anti-Semite":
ibid., p. 31.

625 "My dad definitely thought": Dor-
othy Haney Smith, interviewed by author,
June 20, 1 99 1.

625 "My mother never did like Judge
Newt": Paul Morris, interviewed by
author, September 9, 1992.

625 "Fred Morris agonized": Bill Kin-
ney, interviewed by author, February 23,
1988.

625 "I told Fred's widow": Luther
Hames, interviewed by author, February
24, 1988.

625 "if you were late paying for the
coal": Lucille Sessions Kappes, inter-
viewed by author, November 25, 199 1.

625 "a local shoe store": Jimmy T. An-
derson, interviewed by author, June 24,
1990.

625 "He was guilt-ridden": Bill Kin-
ney, interviewed by author, June 5, 1995.

625 "going to hell": ibid.

625 Bill Kinney described his evening
with Jim Manning and his friendship with
the in-laws of Lawrence Haney in an inter-
view with the author on February 23, 1988.

626 "I have a delicate situation": Bill
Kinney, interviewed by author, September
16, 1986.

626 "I will never be able to write hon-
estly": Bill Kinney, interviewed by author,
August 19, 1990. In January 2000, Stephen
Goldfarb, a reference librarian at the
Atlanta-Fulton County Library, posted
the names of a number of members of
the Frank lynch party online at www.
leofranklynchers.com. His names were
taken from a list that found its way to the
office of Georgia lawyer Tom Watson
Brown, great-grandson of the legendary
populist, and later to the Emory Univer-
sity Library. I had seen the same list in
1986 and regarded it as a starting point as
opposed to the answer to the question
of who lynched Leo Frank. While Gold-
farb fleshed out the document with a few
biographical details, he did not convey
the relationships among the lynch party
members or examine the influence they ex-
erted to pull off then cover up the crime.
Nonetheless, his internet posting sparked
front-page newspaper stories in the Wall
Street Journal on June 9, 2000, the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution on June 12, 2000, and
the Washington Post on June 20, 2000.
Yet despite the exposure, the topic still
remained taboo in Marietta (the Marietta
Journal ignored Goldfarb's revelations).
More significant, his list, because it lacked
context, did not begin to explain how the
lynching brethren got away with one of

NOTES TO PAGES 626-634

705

the most remarkable crimes of the twenti-
eth century.

626 My account of Lucille Frank's
return to Atlanta is drawn largely from my
interview with her nephew Alan Marcus,
on February 26, 1987.

627 "She was charming and nice":
Lucille Morris Suhr, interviewed by
author, September 28, 1990.

627 My portrait of Lucille Frank's
later years in Atlanta is taken largely from
interviews with Alan and Fanny Marcus
on February 26, 1987.

627 "she just started crying": Celestine
Sibley, interviewed by author, January 8,
1986.

627 "an extremely depressed person":
Dr. James Kauffman, interviewed by
author, June 18, 1987.

628 "Her doctor told her": Fanny Mar-
cus, interviewed by author, February 26,
1987.

628 "To sum up her being": Alan Mar-
cus to author, October 16, 1986.

628 Lucille died on April 23, 1957,
Death Certificate #11201, Georgia De-
partment of Public Health.

628 "written to Leo long after his
demise": Fanny Marcus, interviewed by
author, February 26, 1987.

628 For a full account of the attack on
the Temple, see Melissa Fay Greene, The
Temple Bombing (New York: Addison
Wesley, 1996).

628 Alan Marcus revealed the story of
Lucille Frank's burial to me in our inter-
view of February 26, 1987.

24. TheRevenant

630 My account of William Smith's
1948 work at the Fulton County Court-
house is drawn from interviews with Wal-
ter Smith on July 8 and September 4 and 9,
1986.

630 "life and lifetime": William
Smith to Walter Smith, autumn 1948, note
in author's possession.

630 "my moves for con ley": William
Smith, autumn 1948, copy of ms. in
author's possession.

631 My account of Smith's exhaustion
and his lunch at the Piedmont Hotel is
taken from my interview with Walter
Smith on September 9, 1986.

631 "he said 'yes' ": William Smith,
autumn 1948, courtesy Walter Smith.

631 "i'm weak": William Smith, au-
tumn 1948, courtesy Walter Smith.

632 My account of William and
Mary Lou Smith's early years on Staten
Island is drawn from interviews with
Mary Lou Smith Allen on June 22, 1987,
and Walter Smith on July 8 and Septem-

ber 4, 1986, and June 22 and October 1,
1987.

633 "We boast of our freedom": Wil-
liam Smith, July 4, 1924, copy of speech in
author's possession.

633 Smith discusses his ongoing
friendship with the Reverend Henry Hugh
Proctor and Proctor's sermon at his Staten
Island Church in his autobiographical
notes, pp. 21-22.

633 "It would be a pleasure": William
Smith to Charles A. Boston, July 31, 193 1,
carbon copy in author's possession.

634 The Liberty contest to solve the
murder of Mary Phagan was announced in
the magazine's March 23, 1929, issue,
which contained an overview of the case
by Sidney Sutherland entitled "The Mys-
tery of the Pencil Factory": pp. 43-48. The
author is in possession of a carbon copy of
Mary Lou Smith's prizewinning entry,
"How, By Whom and in What Way Was
Mary Phagan Murdered?"

634 "I can recall, as if it was yester-

706

NOTES TO PAGES 634-64I

day": Mary Lou Smith, "How, By Whom,"
p. 7.

634 "I rode on the elevator": ibid.,
p. 8.

635 Mary Lou Smith Allen discussed
her father's decision to withdraw her Lib-
erty article in her June 22, 1987, interview
with the author.

635 "I believe that Mr. Smith": Martin
Lippman to Jerome R. Bennett, Franklin
Trust Building, Philadelphia, November
10, 1929, original in the author's posses-
sion.

635 "He was a dreamer": Frederick
Ballen, interviewed by author, summer
1990.

635 My account of the collegiate
careers of Frank, Mary Lou and Walter
Smith is taken from William Smith's auto-
biographical notes, p. 45.

636 My description of the Fort Smith
property is based on a visit there on June
19, 1987.

636 My account of Smith's fund-
raising successes for Fort Smith is drawn
from my interview with Walter Smith, on
October 1,1987.

637 Smith wrote to Rockefeller early
in his fund-raising effort: William Smith to
John D. Rockefeller, April 4, 1942, carbon
copy in the author's possession.

637 Borden Dairies rejected Smith's
plea near the end of World War II: Cecil I.
Crouse, assistant vice president, the Bor-
den Company, to William Smith, June 29,
1944, original in the author's possession.

637 My description of the Smith
House's appearance and cuisine is in-
formed by my consumption of many
excellent meals there, the first when I was
a college student.

637 The outsize reach of the
Dahlonega Nugget is attested to by the
fact that The American Mercury Reader, a
collection of articles published in 1944,
features the mountain witticisms of J. B.
Townsend alongside, among other works
initially published in the American Mer-

cury, William Faulkner's "That Evening
Sun Go Down" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's
"Crazy Sunday."

638 "We believe that we have":
Dahlonega Nugget, January 19, 1945.

638 "our churches, our college, our
schools": ibid.

638 William Smith's generosity was
first described to me in my interview with
Walter Smith on October 1, 1987, and
subsequently confirmed in an interview
on November 5, 1990, with lawyer Her-
man Spence, who helped the family collect
debts following William Smith's death.
This is the same Spence who was a law
partner with John Wood, who had been a
lynch party associate.

638 moving forward: Dahlonega
Nugget, February 23, 1945.

639 both sides: Dahlonega Nugget,
March 23, 1945.

639 "We do not desire to run the
town": ibid.

639 "an orderly and well-managed
election": Dahlonega Nugget, April 6, 1945.

639 "John Moore was a prominent
citizen": Frances Jones, interviewed by
author, June 19, 1987.

639 "venting personal spleen":
Dahlonega Nugget, April 6, 1945.

640 "Mr. Smith plans to continue":
Dahlonega Nugget, March 15, 1946.

640 "He wrote letters to donors": Nell
Young, interviewed by author, June 19,
1987.

640 My description of the 40,000
board feet of lumber piled by the road and
my portrait of the Smiths sitting on their
porch are drawn from my interview with
Walter Smith on June 22, 1987.

640 "obsessed with a dream": Walter
Smith, interviewed by author, June 22 and
October 1,1987.

641 My account of William Smith's
decision to write "A Competent and Com-
pellable Witness" is drawn from inter-
views with Walter Smith on July 8 and
September 4 and 9, 1986.

NOTES TO PAGES 64I-649

707

641 "Some day it may be": William
Smith to John Slaton, February 15, 1944,
Ernest Rogers Collection, Robert W.
Woodruff Library, Emory University,
Atlanta.

642 "Mr. Frank's lead counsel": Smith,
"Competent Witness," partial first draft in
the author's possession.

642 My account of William Smith's
departure from Dahlonega and arrival in
Atlanta is drawn from my interview with
Walter Smith on October 1, 1987.

642 My portrait of William Smith writ-

ing messages while confined to an oxygen
tent at Crawford Long Hospital is drawn
from my numerous interviews with Walter
Smith over a ten-year period.

643 "in articles of death": William
Smith, February 10, 1949, courtesy Charley
Smith.

643 My account of Mary Lou Smith's
last years in Dahlonega is drawn from
interviews with Walter Smith and from
"Mrs. W M. Smith Rites Held Febru-
ary 19," Dahlonega Nugget, February 27,
1976.

Epilogue

644 Alonzo Mann's conversation with
John J. Hooker and the contents of his
affidavit for the Tennessean are drawn
from Steve Oney, "The Lynching of Leo
Frank," Esquire, September 1985, pp.
90-104.

645 give leo frank: AC, April 26,

1983.

646 Elmer Gould discussed his rela-
tionship with Jim Conley in an interview
with the author on August 22, 1990.

646 Anna Belle Phagan Cochran re-
called meeting Jim Conley in the 1930s in
an interview with the author on June 20,
1986.

647 STAR WITNESS IN FRANK CASE

arrested: AC, October 21, 1941. An
account of this incident also appears in the
Atlanta Journal of October 20, 1941.

647 "Jim is probably buried": Elmer
Gould, in his interview with the author on

August 22, 1990. In his 1965 book A Little
Girl Is Dead, Harry Golden wrote that
Conley died in 1962. However, he pre-
sented no documentation for the asser-
tion, and none appears to exist.

647 "Magazines all over the country":
Allen Lumpkin Henson, Confessions of a
Criminal Lawyer (New York: Vantage
Press, 1959), p. 75.

647 "Every scratch of the pen": ibid.,
p. 76.

647 "During the years": James Dorsey
to Leonard Dinnerstein, February 6, 1964,
AJA.

648 "My dear Gould": Leo Frank to
John Gould, October 29, 1914, the Detroit
Jewish News, April 1, 1983.

648 "By today's standards": AC, Janu-
ary 3, 1984.

649 LEO FRANK PARDON DECISION: AJ,

March 12, 1986.

Bibliography

Archives and Libraries

Leo Frank Collection, American Jewish
Archives, Cincinnati.

Leo Frank Collection, Atlanta History
Center, Atlanta.

Leo Frank Collection, Robert D. Farber
University Archives and Special Col-
lections, Brandeis University Libraries,
Waltham, Mass.

Ida Pearle and Joseph Cuba Community
Archives of the William Breman Jew-
ish Heritage Museum, Atlanta.

Harry Golden Papers, Public Library of
Charlotte and Mecklenburg County,
Charlotte, N.C.

Julius Rosenwald Papers, University of
Chicago Library, Department of Spe-
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Leo Frank Collection, Department of Spe-

cial Collections, Robert W. Woodruff

Library, Emory University, Atlanta.
Ernest Rogers Collection, Department

of Special Collections, Robert W

Woodruff Library, Emory University,

Atlanta.
Nat Harris papers, Georgia Department

of Archives, Morrow, Ga.
John Marshall Slaton Collection, Georgia

Department of Archives, Morrow, Ga.
William Russell Pullen Library, Special

Collections, Georgia State University,

Atlanta.
Supreme Court of Georgia, records room,

Atlanta.
Georgia Newspaper Project, main library,

University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.
National Archives; Washington, D.C.

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Brumby, James R., "Sketch of Life of
James R. Brumby," Marietta, Ga., 1929,
courtesy Mrs. Winter Allfriend.

Frank, Leo, "Leaflets 1 through 7, May 22
through June 3, 1914." In these leaflets,

which are on file at the William Free-
man Jewish Heritage Museum in At-
lanta, Frank outlines the case for his
innocence. They were originally circu-
larized as part of the defense's 1914
campaign to win Frank a new trial.

Garrett, Garet, "Diary." New York, May 5,
1915 through June 7, 191 6, courtesy
Richard Corauelle.

Johnson, Hutch, "The Leo Frank Case."
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Kalmar, Karen, "Richard B. Russell: Dem-

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill, N.C. 1979.

Meadows, Carol, "Review of the Leo M.
Frank Case, 1913-1915." Undergradu-
ate research paper, West Georgia Col-
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Nesbitt, Martha Tovell, "The Social
Gospel in Atlanta: 1 900-1 920." Doc-
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Roberts, DeWitt, "Anti-Semitism and the
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Defamation League, Atlanta, circa
1950.

Rogers, William Curran, "A Comparison
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Master's thesis, University of Georgia,
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Smith, Mary Lou, "How, By Whom and in
What Way Was Mary Phagan Mur-
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Smith, McLellan, taped interview by Leo-
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Newspapers

Atlanta Constitution
Atlanta Georgian
Atlanta Journal
Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle
Boston Traveler
Chicago Tribune
Dahlonega (Ga.) Nugget
Los Angeles Times

Macon (Ga.) Telegraph
Marietta (Ga.) Journal
New York American
New York Herald
New York Journal
New York Sun
New York Times
New York Tribune

Articles

Asbury, Herbert, "Hearst Comes to
Atlanta." American Mercury (January,
1926): 87-95.

Cashin, Edward J. "Thomas Loyless,
Responsible Journalist," Richmond
County History (Winter 1977):
18-28.

Connolly, C.P., "The Frank Case." Collier's
Weekly (December 19, 1914): 6-24 and
(December 26, 1914): 18-24.

Dinnerstein, Leonard, "Leo Frank and the
American Jewish Community," manu-
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MacLean, Nancy, "The Leo Frank Case
Reconsidered: Gender and Sexual Pol-
itics in the Making of Reactionary Pop-

ulism." Journal of American History
(December 1991): 917-48.

Moseley, Charlton, "Latent Klanism in
Georgia, 1890-19 15." Georgia Histori-
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, "William Joseph Simmons: The

Unknown Wizard." Atlanta History
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Train, Arthur, "Did Leo Frank Get 'Jus-
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1915): 3I4-I7-

Watts, Eugene J., "The Police in Atlanta,
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Books

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Acknowledgments

As I write this, ninety years have passed since Mary Phagan was murdered, eighty-eight
since Leo Frank was lynched. During the last seventeen of those years, I have devoted
myself to learning and writing about the two crimes. I never intended to take so long—
but I did. Along the way, I benefited from the knowledge and kindness of numerous peo-
ple. Many have shared their stories, others their homes, some their hearts.

I am indebted to the following people for their insights into Atlanta at the time of the
Frank case and in its aftermath: Kathleen Adams, Cecil Alexander, Henry Alexander,
Jr., Thomas Arnold, Daniel Boorstin, Harllee Branch, III, Hugh Dorsey, Jr., Norman
Elsas, Clarence Feibelman, Franklin M. Garrett, Elmer Gould, Bea Haas, Joseph Haas,
Dr. Mark Huey of the Atlanta public school system, Cliff Kuhn, Dr. James A. Kauffman,
Alonzo Mann, Alan and Fanny Marcus, F Levering Neely, Nancy Saul, Dale Schwartz,
Luther Rosser Shelton, Tom Shelton, Celestine Sibley, Andrew Sparks, Ken Thomas,
Judge Elbert Turtle, James Venable and Charles Wittenstein.

From the outset, one of my central areas of inquiry was the Frank lynching and its
continuing impact on Marietta. Even after nearly nine decades, some people were
unwilling to discuss the matter. Many, however, were forthcoming. Among those to
whom I am grateful are Mrs. Winter Allfriend, James T. Anderson, Jr., Otis Cheatham,
Chuck Clay, Tim Cole, Dan Cox, Bob Garrison, James Bolan Glover, V., Steve Frey,
Judge Luther Hames, Katherine Morris Hardy, Hill Huffman, Lex Jolley, Lucille Ses-
sions Kappes, Mary Phagan Kean, George Keeler, Sara Morris Kennedy, Narvel Las-
siter, James W. Lee, Bob Livolsier, Deveraux McClatchey, Jr., George Morris, Newt
Morris, Jr., Paul Morris, Mrs. Guy Northcutt, James Phagan, Dr. Thomas Scott, Dorothy
Haney Smith, Herman Spence, Lucille Morris Suhr, Judson Ward, Harold Willingham,
Golmer Haney Wilson and Zaida Clay Wood.

The other Georgia town that provided a location for a main act in the Frank case is
Milledgeville. I am indebted to Louis H. Andrews for sharing his deep knowledge of the
place and its personalities and to Jake and Sonny Goldstein for getting me into the now
defunct state prison farm.

Though Frank was convicted and lynched in the South, northern newspapers gave
the story its national prominence. No publication played a greater role than the New
York Times. My understanding of the Times's coverage owes much to the unpublished
diary of Garet Garrett. Garrett, an assistant editor at the Times, observed from up close
as the paper risked its journalistic integrity in an effort to exonerate Frank. I am grateful
to the writer Richard Cornuelle for sharing Garrett's diary with me.

During the course of my labors, I benefited from the insights of several excellent his-
torians, among them Edward Cashin of Augusta State University, David Chalmers of the
University of Florida, Charlton Mosely, professor emeritus at Georgia Southern Univer-

714 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

sity, and Leonard Dinnerstein of the University of Arizona, whose 1968 book on the
Frank case always stood me in good stead. I am also thankful to the late dean of South-
ern historians, Yale University's C. Vann Woodward, who interviewed many of the prin-
cipals in the Frank saga when writing his 1938 book, Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel, and
shared his recollections of those interviews with me.

I owe an equal debt to a number of skilled archivists, among them Victor Berch of the
Robert D. Farber Archives at Brandeis University, Sandy Berman of the Ida Pearle and
Joseph Cuba Community Archives of the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum,
Mike Brubaker of the Atlanta History Center, Dale Couch of the Georgia Department
of Archives, Linda Matthews of Emory University's Robert W Woodruff Library, Anne
A. Salter of the Oglethorpe University Library, and Jacob Marcus and Fanny Zelcer of
the American Jewish Archives.

Among the people who did me random favors over the years, four stand out. Hutch
Johnson, who as a graduate student in the 1960s met one of the men involved in Frank's
lynching, provided me with a copy of his master's thesis on the topic. Thomas Kunkel,
biographer of Harold W. Ross, shared his theories regarding the role the future editor of
the New Yorker played in the case. Joe Mciyre, a former colleague of mine at the Atlanta
Journal and Constitution, put his love of photography and history to use in helping me to
locate some of the pictures that illustrate this volume. David Earle, anthropologist at the
Lancaster (Ca.) History Museum, contributed greatly to my understanding of Newton
Augustus Morris's sojourn in California.

Unlike many nonfiction books, mine was researched and written without an editorial
assistant. As a longtime newspaper and magazine writer, I believe in hands-on reporting.
However, as I neared the finish line, I profited greatly from the labor of Jacob Forman,
who helped me plow through the complicated accounts of Frank's numerous appellate
battles, and Clay Senechal and Casee Maxfield, who helped me piece together the end-
notes.

This book would not exist were it not for my literary agent, Kathy Robbins, whose
idea it was. Neither of us realized what we were getting into, but luckily for me, Kathy
doesn't know the meaning of the word "quit," and the several times I tried to learn it, she
dissuaded me as only she can. My editor at Pantheon, Dan Frank, no relation to my pro-
tagonist, also played a strong and positive role. Though he inherited the project from its
acquiring editor, Linda Healey, he never treated it as an orphan, working tirelessly and
imaginatively on its behalt I am grateful as well to Altie Karper, the managing editor at
Pantheon, for her superb copyediting

Whatever this book's failings, they are my own, but there would have been more of
them had it not been for the inspired comments of two dear friends. Georgia native
Mitchell F. Dolin brought his legal expertise and literary sensibility to the portions of the
manuscript dealing with the United States Supreme Court. Scott Kaufer, magazine edi-
tor nonpareil, lent his perspicacity to the book as a whole, recalling to its author the only
two things that matter in literature— narrative and character.

I could not have survived the emotional toll this book's protracted birthing exacted
had it not been for several people. In Georgia, I relied on the companionship of Jim
Auchmutey, John English, Robert Coram and Jeannine Addams,Tom Chaffin and Meta
Larsson, John Gillespie and Eleanor Ringel, and Frazier Moore, Jr. At home in Los
Angeles, I counted on Sean Daniel and Ruth Hunter, Todd S. Purdum and Dee Dee
Myers, Tom Beeton, Greg Critser, and my brother and sister in literary arms, Russ
Rymer and Susan Faludi. Also key to my coming through this intact was the friendship

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 715

of Alex S. Jones and Susan E. Tifft and that of Richard Zoglin. So, too, was the encour-
agement of Robert and Eleanor Oney, my parents. Most significant, my wife, Madeline
Stuart, was unstinting in her love for me. She never wavered in her faith. Her spirit, as
well as that of my loyal Jack Russell terrier, Jackson, who has been along for thirteen of
the seventeen years, kept me sane.

Finally, there are four Georgians who in their different ways cast a light in the dark-
ness. Tom Watson Brown, great-grandson and namesake of the populist firebrand,
repeatedly argued the case for Leo Frank's guilt to me. In an era when Frank's inno-
cence is taken as a foregone conclusion, he helped me to maintain an open mind. Eugene
Herbert Clay, Jr., son of lynch party planner Herbert Clay, entertained the sort of painful
queries most children would never countenance about a parent. As much as I did, he
wanted to know what had happened, even if it implicated his father. Bill Kinney, associ-
ate editor of the Marietta Journal, though he rarely gave direct responses to my ques-
tions, provided what for a reporter is actually better— the right questions to ask and the
names of the people who knew the answers. Walter Smith, whose father represented Jim
Conley, presented me with both a bequest and a challenge. The story of William Smith's
change of heart is dramatic and moving, and Walter entrusted me with its telling. At the
same time, he demanded that I follow a difficult path. As he put it, my job was to "ascend
to the truth." Walter pointed out the summit— I tried my best to reach it.

Index

Adair, Forrest, 382

Adams, Mrs. Desmond, 476

Adams, John Quincy (photographer), 267,

268
Adams, Kathleen, 126, 127
Addams, Jane, 57, 388, 393
Adler, Cyrus, 365
Akron Beacon-Journal, 574
Albany (Georgia) Herald, 382
Albany (New York) Knickerbocker Press,

450
Albert, CD., 290

Alexander, Henry A., 391 , 392, 45 1 , 452,
465,466,499,533-34
and Dorsey, 96, 327, 618-19
and executive clemency, 459, 470, 473,

481,489,504
Frank case studied by, 618
and Frank's burial, 575
and Frank's constitutional rights, 447,

448,456,458
and Jewish community, 1 1 , 96, 327,

447
and Milledgeville, 540, 545
on murder notes, 378-80, 412-13, 416,

4i9»454
and public statements, 445, 473
silence on Frank case, 617, 618
Alexander, Hooper, 478
Alford, Roy, 532
Allen, Frederick, 648
Allen, J. P., 11,626
Alston, RobertC, 478
American Audit Company, 277-78
American Bankers' Association, 103
American Bar Association, 573, 633-34
American Cast Iron and Pipe Company,

Birmingham, 57
American Israelite, 348
American Jewish Committee, 346-47,

365-66,395,419,463,577
American Legion, 613
American Life Insurance Company, 181

American Mercury, 42, 184, 590, 637
Anderson, James T., 588
Anderson, James T., Jr., 522, 588
Anderson, W. E:

at coroner's inquest, 72

at crime scene, 18, 19, 20
Anderson, W. T., 591
Antelope Valley Real Estate Agency,

523
Anti-Defamation League, 617
anti-Semitism:
in Atlanta, 98-100, 345, 348, 382
backlash of, 347, 348, 366, 577, 591-92
bris misunderstood in, 496
Dorsey and, 509, 613
fear of further violence in, 616-19
Felder and, 106, 1 1 1, 1 12-13
in Georgia, 7, 462, 509, 557"58, 59i"9 2 ,

597-99,648
of Henry Ford, 615
newspapers fanning flames of, 98-100,

453,462-63,598
Temple bombing, 628
Times story on, 374
at the trial, 3 1 2, 3 16, 320-2 1, 326-27,

328-29, 330-3 1 , 333-34, 345-46, 347,

358-59,361,362,366
Watson's writings on, 451-52, 455, 462,

479, 507-8, 541 , 542, 550, 558, 592, 598,

599,603,604
Applebaum, Callie Scott, 94, 229
Applebaum, Jerry, 94
Arnold, Benedict, 328, 584
Arnold, Reuben R.:
and amended motion, 35 1-52, 363
and appeals, 4 1 9, 42 1 , 465
career of, 176

closing arguments by, 316-2 1 , 326
and Conley, 178, 183, 185-88
courtroom skills of, 176-77
and defense witnesses, 261-62, 265-98
and execution date, 473
and executive clemency, 470

7 i8

INDEX

Arnold, Reuben R.: (continued)
and extraordinary motion, 375-77,

398-99, 406, 409-10, 418-19
and Frank's defense, 176, 177-78,305,

493,642
on further evidence, 371-72
and Georgia Supreme Court, 368-70
and grand jury (Phagan case), 185-88
and Journal, 176, 381
and jury selection, 188
as Mister Rube, 177
mistrial requested by, 339
and new trial hearings, 351-52, 353-63
physical appearance of, 177, 191
postponement sought by, 178
and prosecution witnesses, 207, 231-32,

236-37, 243, 253, 255, 258, 259
and rebuttal, 307, 308, 309, 310, 312
and retractions of statements, 372-73,

418
and sentencing, 342-43
and trial, 191, 192, 193-94, 204, 205, 207,

210,231-59,261-62,265-98,305,313,

326,334,335,493,494
on vacation, 349
and voir dire, 193-94
Aron, Samuel, 350, 356
Asbury, Herbert, 36-38, 42, 44, 98-99, 184,

590
Asher,J.M.,3i2
Atherton, Grace, 298
Atkinson, Samuel C, 368, 369-70
Atlanta:
anti-Semitism in, 98-100, 345, 348, 382
"blind tigers" in, 120-21
Chamber of Commerce, 583
child labor in, 6-8, 15-16, 35-36, 73
children in, 5
Confederate Memorial Day in, 3, 16-17,

23,73,86,181,197,330-31
cost of living in, 5, 37
death rates in, 5
Decatur Street, 53
diminution of, 61 1
as dry city, 59
"earth closets" of, 5
factory work in, 5, 57
fear of further violence in, 589, 608,

616-19
Federal Penitentiary, 105
Fiddler's Convention, 5-6
fraternal organizations of, 155-56
Grant Park Zoo in, 122
Greek community in, 97-98
health problems in, 5

Jewish community in, 10, 1 1-13, 34, 74,
79-80, 82, 87, 97-100, 113, 192, 289,

290-91 , 3 13, 327, 348, 356-57, 597,

607-8,616-19,628
Jewish emigration from, 608-9
lynching feared in, 97, 450
melting pot of, 53
Men and Religion Forward Committee

in, 57-58, 59
migration from farms to, 5
Mitchell Street, 72
Negro community of, 120-27
opera in, 16

police in, see Atlanta Police Department
population in, 13

progress in, 13-14, 40, 42, 53"54, 630
prostitution in, 56-57, 58-59, 72, 322
race riot (1906) in, 122-24, 150,334,518
real estate speculation in, 13
restricted district of, 56-57, 58, 59
return to normalcy in, 612, 616
Separate Park Law in, 122
silence on Frank case in, 616-19, 626
speakeasies in, 59
Temple in, 10, 12, 345, 608, 617, 628
Terminal Train Station in, 56, 59, 72,

76-77,114,120
Vine City in, 120-22, 127, 181, 183
violent atmosphere in, 334"35, 34°, 34*,

355,363,38i,463,48i
white slavery in, 52
"whitewash committee" in, 55
Atlanta Art Association, 1 1
Atlanta Brewing and Ice Company, 24
Atlanta City Council, 420
Atlanta Constitution:
and abduction plans, 545
antipolice position of, 96-97
and anti-Semitism, 99
on Arnold, 177
and Burns, 387, 400, 402
circulation of, 40
onColyar, 111-12
competition of, 40, 44, 184
and Conley, 133, 136, 138, 140, 147,

185-86,612
on coroner's inquest, 73
and crime scene, 20
on Dorsey, 101-2, 505
on Farrar's visit, 475
on Frank's character, 89-90, 1 14-15
on Frank's jail cell, 349
on Frank's lynching, 528, 566, 581 , 585,

597-98
Frank's statements to, 377

INDEX

719

on grand jury (Phagan case), 1 17, 185

on McKnights, 163, 164, 166, 170

and Mincey, 181

on opera, 16

on Phagan murder, 22-23, 43 » 48, 53, 60,

87,100-102,114-15
and police brutality, 55
and police interrogations, 129-30
political stance of, 41, 97, 589
on postmortem, 93

on prison facilities, 538, 539, 553, 554, 555
on progress, 14
on racial topics, 121
reward offered by, 60
salacious rumors printed in, 73-74,

1 14-15
on scene of crime, 499
silence on investigations, 589-90
on Slaton's career, 14
and Smith, 435
trial described in, 193, 195, 196, 198,206,

222, 255, 261, 268, 274, 296-97,308,341
Atlanta Evening News, 122
Atlanta Georgian:
and abduction plans, 545
and anti-Semitism, 98-100
and Burns, 386, 387, 392
on child labor, 100
circulation of, 40, 43, 342, 589-90
on circumstantial evidence, 97
on commutation of sentence, 505,

589-90
competition of, 40-41, 44, 1 10
and Conley, 132-34, 137, 140, 144,

145-47, 172, 178-84
on denial of appeal, 446
editorial stance of, 42
on exhumation, 91
facts embellished by, 36-37, 97-98, 166,

181,184
on Frank in jail, 349
on Frank's lynching, 566-67, 582, 584
Frank's statements 10,377,419
and Georgia Supreme Court, 368
on grand jury (Phagan case), 1 16-17
Hearst as publisher of, 6, 23, 35, 39-40,

41-44,94,97,99
on judge's admission of uncertainty,

364-65
on juror bias, 35 1
launching of, 40
on McKnights, 164, 165, 166
and Mincey, 181-83
on Mrs. Frank, 8 1
on new evidence, 179-81

"The Old Police Reporter," 97, 169,

170-71,184-85,295,297
on Phagan murder, 35-38, 42-45, 47,

51-52,53,60-61,64,68,87
and police department, 55, 56, 58
on postmortem, 93
on prisons, 122
pro-Frank stance of, 97, 100, 137, 147,

166,181,184-85,271
on racial issues, 122, 123
reporters on, 42
reward offered by, 37, 5 1 , 60
salacious rumors printed in, 71, 72
silence on investigations, 589-90
and Smith, 435, 439
trial described in, 193, 195, 199, 202, 205,

206, 212, 216, 219, 222, 223, 236-38,

255, 260, 261, 262, 265, 266-67, 274,

305,335,342,343-44
unconvicted suspect declared guilty by,

98

Atlanta Independent, 126
Atlanta Journal:

and abduction plans, 545

and anti-Semitism, 99

on appeals, 447

and Arnold, 176,381

and Burns, 386, 387, 392

circulation of, 40

andColyar, no

competition of, 40-41, 44, 99, 184

and Conley, 133, 136, 137, 138, 140, 143,
147, 175, 185-86, 240, 612

on Creen's attack, 547-48, 550

on Dorsey as solicitor general, 92, 95

on executive clemency, 478, 505

on Frank as suspect, 67, 77

on Frank's lynching, 566, 569, 581-82,

583,585
Frank's statements to, 377
on further evidence, 371-72
on grand jury (Phagan case), 1 15-16
on Lee as suspect, 68-69
Marx as guest columnist for, 12
on McKnights, 165, 166, 170
and Mincey, 181
on murder notes, 379-80
on Phagan murder, 28, 44-45, 52, 64-65,

67
and police brutality, 55
political stance of, 41, 478, 519, 589
on postmortem, 93
on prison facilities, 538, 539, 544, 553,

554
pro-Frank position of, 383, 384

720

INDEX

Atlanta Journal: (continued)
on racial topics, 120, 121, 122
silence on investigations, 589-90
support for new trial in, 380-82
trial described in, 196, 206, 216, 222, 238,

240, 252, 253, 299-300, 350
Atlanta Loan & Savings Company, 1 1
Atlanta Mutual Life, 124-25
Atlanta National Bank, 299
Atlanta Paper Mills Company, 81
Atlanta Players Club, 14-15, 104-5
Atlanta Police Department, 53-60
Bertillon system used by, 54
brutality in reputation of, 54-55
and Burns, 103-4,386
and Conley, 118-20, 127, 128, 129-34,

136-38, 140-44* 172
at coroner's inquest, 72
corrupt reputation of, 54-55, 107, 109
crime scene investigation by, 18-22,

46-47,72,92,108
crusading against vice, 55-59, 105, 106,

109,322
evidence borrowed from, 32, 34, 92
evidence mishandled by, 30-31, 92, 93,

220,426,436
and Frank, 24-28, 34, 48-5 1 , 53, 60,

61-70,392-93
headquarters of, 53-54
interrogations by, 32, 64, 67-70, 129-33,

137, 138, 162-63, 166, 263, 282, 304,

372
investigations into, 55, 97, 112, 169
leads and tips to, 52-53
and Lee, 18-22, 24, 32
"lockboxes" used by, 54
payoffs to, 56, 58
and Phagan case, see Phagan, Mary,

murder case
and Pinkerton Agency, 75-79, 102
and planted evidence, 65-66
public skepticism toward, 100
puritanical regime of, 55-59, 72
and racial issues, 123
recruits to, 54
and retractions of statements, 372-73,

389-90
and Smith's second thoughts, 433-34
suspects of, 21-22, 33, 37, 47-48, 53,

61-70
third degree as specialty of, 129-31
and trial, 218-22
Atlanta Public Schools, 611
Atlanta Stockade, 122
Atlanta University, 120, 126, 127

Augusta Chronicle, 334"35> 426, 457, 462,

478,553,599-604,609
Aymar, Francis W., 442

Bachman, George, 275, 337

Baker, H.M., 298

"Ballad of Mary Phagan, The" (Carson),

491-93,571-72
Ballen, Frederick, 635
Baltimore Sun, 449
Bankhead,Tallulah, 514
Bank of North America, 105
Banner Sheet Metal Company, 9
Barber, Jesse Max, 123
Barber, R. L., 396, 398, 399
Barmore, Myrtle, 3
Barnes, Lizzie, 298
Barnes, Sarah, 295
Barney Google, 41
Barondess, Joseph, 578
Barrett, R. P.:

evidence discovered in paint factory by,
46,48,72,115,228-29,231

hairs on lathe of , 46, 228, 23 1 , 28 1 , 3 1 8,
334,385,404,424

and reward, 23 1 , 285, 318, 334

rumors repeated by, 72

on Wrenn scam, 406
Bauer, Lester, 476
Beatie,W.D.,i85,i87
Beavers, James Litchfield:

and Burns Agency, 103, 420

career of, 58

and Conley, 137, 138, 141, 142, 238,336

and coroner's inquest, 74

and Dorsey, 92, 101

and Felder, 106, 107, 1 10-13

and Frank's arrest, 61, 66-67

limousine of, 54

and opponents to clemency, 503

and Phagan investigation, 46-47, 60, 61,
66-67,92,97,102

and police fighting vice, 56, 57-58, 59, 72,
105,106,322

political opponents of, 106, 109, 1 10, 1 12

and Smith's second thoughts, 434, 437

and the trial, 238
Beck,L.H., 116, 163
Beck, Marcus, 368, 370
Beck & Gregg Hardware, 163, 165, 282,

307,372
Becker, Henry F, 380, 412-13, 416
Bellingrath, A. F, 193-94
Bellwood Prison Camp, 435, 438, 487
Benjamin, Judah P, 327

INDEX

721

Benjamin, Sol, 116

Benson, Berry, 425-26, 430, 454, 478, 482,

559,599
Benson, George, 121
Benson, Gus, 565, 587
Benton, D. R., 35, 5 10, 528
Benton family, 4
Bernhardt, Lena, 77
Bertillon system, 54
Biddinger, Guy, 387, 390
Bierce, Ambrose, 38
Billikopf, Jacob, 462
Birchall, Frederick, 590
Birth of a Nation, The (film), 606
Black, John:

and Burns Agency, 104

and Conley, 118, 127, 128, 129-34, 137,
189,263,325

and coroner's inquest, 96

and extraordinary motion for new trial,
384,404,417

and Frank's arrest, 60, 63, 64, 66-68, 69

and Frank's character, 77

and Pinkerton Agency, 63, 64

and police investigation, 24-29, 31, 48,
51, 63-69, 96, 100, 164, 205, 21 1, 273,
304,315,318-19,324,373,494

at the trial, 216-24, 353
Blacks, see Negroes
Blackstock,Tom,88
Bloomfield's Funeral Home, 22, 23, 27-28,

32,33-34,35,52,77
B'Nai Brith, Atlanta, 1 1 , 79, 289, 348
Boehm, Julian, 188
Boorstin, Daniel, 608
Boorstin, Samuel, 341-42, 352, 393, 398,

486, 499, 608
Booth, John, 586-87
Borah, William P., 445
Borden Dairies, 637
Bormann, Martin, 626
Bosshardt, Charles, 195, 351
Boston:

petitions circulated in, 477

protest meetings in, 477, 578
Boston, Charles A., 633-34
Boston American, 38
Boston Journal, 449
Boston Post, 589

Boston Traveler, 477, 486-87, 542, 578
Branch, Harllee, 146, 371, 380-82
Brent,T.Y., 64,312
Brewster, Col. Pendleton, 478
Bricker,Rev.L.O.,382
Brin, Alexander, 477, 486-87, 488, 542

Brisbane, Arthur, 6, 40, 456, 472
Brown, Johnny, 42
Brown, Joseph M.:
and abduction plans, 513, 520-21, 540,

544

clemency opposed by, 490, 510, 520

at Confederate Memoral Day, 16

Constitution as organ of, 41

descendents of, 626

election of, 155, 176,384,520

incitement to violence by, 558

public statements by, 462

and Watson, 520
Brown, R. J.:

at coroner's inquest, 72

at crime scene, 18, 19, 20
Brown, Tom Watson, 645
Brown, "Yellow Jacket," in lynch gang,

528,560,562,584
Broyles, Nash, 121-22, 149
Brumby, Arnoldus, 519
Brumby, Bolan Glover:

and abduction plans, 5 13, 519, 521, 544

background of, 519-20

and Civil War, 520, 521

clemency opposed by, 485

on grand jury (Frank case), 588, 589

moved to Florida, 620
Brumby, Cordelia Gray, 519
Brumby, James Remley (Bolan 's father),

519,520
Brumby, Jim (garage owner), 509, 528, 620
Brumby, Otis, 519, 620
Brumby, Otis, Jr., 626
Brumby, Thomas M., 403, 5 19
Brumby Chair Company, 519, 620
Bryan, William Jennings, 8
Burdett, Ely, 78
Burke, C.W, 391

and Burns, 386, 408

and Carter letters, 408

and witnesses' statements, 372, 378, 394,
404,405,411,412,413,416,420
Burke, J. M., 53 1-32, 539, 543, 553, 561, 562,

585
Burns, Robert, 95
Burns, William J.:

grand jury investigation of, 420

and Illinois Central case, 387

Lasker's funding of, 375

and Los Angeles Times bombing, 102-3,

387,445
in Marietta, 401-3, 485, 527
movies about, 103
and Nelmses' disappearance, 423

722

INDEX

Burns, William J.: (continued)

newspaper stories about, 102,386,387,
391-93, 397-98, 400, 402, 410, 457

and Phagan case, 103-4,385-87,390,
391-94, 397-404, 406-1 1,412, 415, 416,
419,426

reputation of, 385, 397, 398

and Smith, 424, 430, 436, 438

taunted about lynching, 581
Burns Agency:

engagement of, 104, 106

legal proceedings against, 420

and police, 103-4

Smith's job with, 610-1 1

withdrawal of, 1 12
Burrows, Rev. Lansing, 160
Burton, Emmet, in lynch gang, 528, 563
Burton, Luther:

conscience of, 625

in lynch gang, 528, 563, 625

names named by, 625-26
Burwell, William H., 5 18
Busby, Nellie, 58
Butler, Katie, 85

California Penal Code, 523

California State Assessors' Association,

584
Campbell, Pat:
background of, 32
and Conley, 138, 141
on Dorsey's staff, 92, 1 13, 141, 162, 353,

357
and extraordinary motion for new trial,

384
and McKnight, 162
and police investigation, 32, 162, 183,

230,353,357,389
Campbell, Wade, 279-80
Candler, Asa G., 15, 126
Carey, Alice, 127
Carnegie Hall, New York, protest meeting

in, 444
Carson, Fiddlin' John, 5, 491-93, 571-72,

580,588
Carson, Rebecca, 288,309,310-11,312,

320,338,359
Carter, Annie Maude, 416-17
and Conley's confession, 395-96, 41 5,

417
Conley's letters to, 390-91, 399-400, 403,

407, 408, 414-15, 419, 429, 430, 432,

482,483,498,502
Conley's marriage proposal to, 395

moved to New Orleans, 404, 409, 420

and Wrenn, 414-15
Carter, Jimmy, 620
Carter, Josiah, Jr., 485, 509, 565, 579
Caruso, Enrico, 16,533
Cato, Myrtice, 286, 308, 3 10-1 1
Chambers, Aldine, 153, 154, 155,439
Chambers, Daley, 153
Chambers, Philip, 281-82, 412-13, 416
Chambers, Smith, 153
Chattanooga Times, 346
Cheatham, Otis, 624
Cherokee Advance, 549
Chewning, W T., 1 15, 372
Chicago: protest meetings in, 476-77
Chicago Tribune, 387, 491 , 574
child labor, 6-8, 15-16, 35-36, 73, 100, 590,

599
Childs, Leroy, 261-62, 337
Church of the Immaculate Conception,

Atlanta, 338-39
Cincinnati Post, 462
Citizen Hearst (Swanberg),38
Civil War, U.S., 520, 521
Clansmen, The (Dixon), 606
Clark, Emma, 85, 135, 139, 242, 253,

282-83,301,319
Clark,O.S.,76,77
Clark College, Atlanta, 1 24, 1 27
Clark Woodenware Company, 269, 275,

319
Clay, Alexander Stephens, 485, 504
Clay, Chuck, 626

Clay, Eugene Herbert, Jr., 515, 623, 626
Clay, Evelyn, 5 14, 5 16
Clay, Francis White, 514-15
Clay, Frank, 514, 515-16
Clay, Herbert:
and abduction plans, 513, 514, 521, 525,

528,544

background of, 5 14-16, 522

career of, 618, 620

clemency opposed by, 485, 490, 586

death of, 623

downward spiral of, 621-24

dual purpose of, 586

and grand jury (Frank case), 588-89

and investigations, 586-88

political favors owed to, 516, 528
Clay, Lex, 5 14, 5 15
Clay, Lucius, 5 14, 626
Clay, Marjorie Lockwood, 514, 623
Clay, Ryburn, 514
Clofine, Mike, 42

INDEX

723

Coates, Foster "Curser ," 43-44, 97, 98, 99

Cobb, iy, 34

Cobb County Democratic Committee,

401-2
Cobb County Times, 620
Coca-Cola, 15,40, 126,579
Cohen, John S., 619
Cohen, Levi, 10
Cohen, Sam, 552
Coleman, Fannie Phagan, 4, 61

newspaper stories about, 35

notified of Mary's murder, 23-24, 35, 76,

235
statements by, 114, 179, 197
at the trial, 196-97, 199,314,333
Coleman, John W., 4, 61 , 404
and Conley, 646-47
and Felder scheme, 106-7, IQ 8, 1 10
notified of Mary's murder, 23, 24, 76,

235
at the trial, 191,341
Collier's Weekly, 444, 445, 453"55. 456, 457.

461,491
Columbus Enquirer, 582
Colyar, Arthur S., Jr., 107-12
Compton, Guy, 546-47. 549. 550
Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, 103
Confederate Memorial Day, 3, 6-7, 16-17,

23,73,86, 151, 181, I97.330-3I
Conley, James, 127-44
ability to read and write, 127, 128-29,

130. 135, 256-57, 3 1 8, 33 1 , 428-30, 495,

498
as accessory after the fact, 370, 385, 431
activities on day of murder, 1 18-19, 129,

146,238-43,318,389
birth and early years of, 119
and Burns, 386
and Carter, 390-91, 395-96, 399-400,

414-15, 4I7.4I9. 429. 430, 432, 483.

498
and Coleman family, 646-47
downward spiral of, 612-13, 647
as drinker, 1 19-20, 181, 182, 246, 288,

378,612,647
final whereabouts unknown, 646, 647
Frank's refusal to meet with, 137-38,

291,304,336
grand jury indictment sought against,

183-88
interrogations of, 129-33, 137, 138, 186,

3 X 9. 358, 361, 498
at Luckie Street YMCA, 646
marriage of, 612

as murder suspect, 130, 133-34, 136-37,
171-74, 178-87, 208, 238, 274, 291, 292,
319-20,321,361,378-79,387,392,
395-96, 398, 400, 414-15. 417. 419. 426,
430, 435-36, 453-55. 466, 478, 488, 496,
503, 542-43. 559. 599. 644-45

newspaper stories about, 133-34,
136-38, 140, 144, 145-47. 185-86,381,
388,612,647

popularity of, 343"44. 487-88

preparation for trial, 188-89, 2 37, 240,
254,324-25,337

release and rearrest of, 173-75

robbery attempted by, 612

at scene of crime, 141-44

sentencing of, 385

Smith as counsel for, 145-48, 173-74,
x 75. 185-86, 188-89, J 9i» 238, 249, 256,
257. 324. 337. 385. 393. 424. 426,
430-3 1 , 438-39. 630-3 1 , 64 1

and Smith's second thoughts, 435, 438

statements by, 1 18-19, I2 9, 131-41. 143.
146, 148, 162, 164, 171-73, 174, 180,
185-86, 187, 235, 243, 247-53, 263-65,
318-19, 324-25. 358, 359-6o, 370, 377.
380,453,496,500-501

and trial, 192, 206-7, 237-57, 260, 261,
262-66, 268, 269-70, 271-72, 274, 275,
283, 284-85, 292-94, 297, 300, 306,
314-15,319,320,324-26,331-32,
337-38, 349. 353. 354. 359~6i . 362-63,
368, 369, 370, 380, 399, 409, 428, 453,
469,489-90

unique verbal fingerprint of, 431-33,
483,498,501
Conley, Mary Glover, 612, 646
Connolly, Christopher Powell, 444-46,
452-55. 459. 461, 466, 477. 486, 559
Conroy, John C, 416
Cooke, Ara, 127
Cooper Union, New York, memorial in,

577-79
Cotton States Belting Company, 380
Coursey,L.T.,286
Craig, Britt, 20, 22-23, 34. 43. 129-30, 237,

246,618
Crane, M. H. "Rony," 523-24
Craven, Roy L., 163, 307
Creen, William:
Frank assaulted by, 546-50, 551, 553,

554-55.556,558,567
full pardon granted to, 618
Harris and, 548, 554
Crogman, William, 123

724

INDEX

Croly, Herbert, 491
Curley, James M., 477

Dahlonega, Georgia, 151, 159, 636-40

Dahlonega Nugget, 637, 638-40

Daily Oklahoman, 491

Daley, Walter, 153

Dalton, C. Brutus:
character of, 316-17, 321-22, 360
retraction of statement by, 389-90, 414,

416,418
and rumors of trysts, 243, 258-59, 265,
279,281,284,306,313,316-17,321-22,

337
Dalton Citizen (Georgia), 382
Daniell, George:

and abduction plans, 525

band of, 526

living in fear, 624

and lynching, 560

and postlynching meetings, 580
Daniell Jewelry, 605
Darley,N.V.,64,28o

and Conley, 128, 134, 136

and crime scene, 29-31, 62, 201, 211-12,
226,324,336

at the trial, 230-32, 268-69

at the undertaker's, 34
Darlson, Pearl, 287
Davis, Benjamin, 126-27
Davis, Earl, 195
Davis, Jefferson, 521
Davis, Mary, 309
Davison, Robert E.:

and commutation of sentence, 484, 487,

488,543

on Creen inquiry, 555

and Georgia Prison Commission, 481,
486,487,488,532,551

and grand jury (Frank case), 588

and lynching, 560, 562, 584, 585

Marietta delegation's visit to, 486

political threat to, 539

and prison conditions, 539, 543, 551, 553
Dawson News, 481
Dearborn Independent, 615
Deere, John, 9
DeMille, Cecil B., 474
Denham, Harry, 50, 162, 230, 290, 314
Dennis, Eloise Nelms, 423, 427
DeVere,R.V.,339
DeVore,H.M.,4i3
Dickens, Charles, 427
Dinnerstein, Leonard, 647
Disraeli, Benjamin, 327

Dittler, Alex, 290
Dittmer, John, 126-27
Dixon, Thomas, 606
Dobbs, Cicero, 528, 626
Dobbs,E.P:

car lent to lynch gang by, 528, 581

clemency opposed by, 485

and investigations, 587

as Marietta mayor, 485, 528, 581
Dobbs, L.S.:

in coroner's inquest, 72

and Frank's body, 571

and grand jury (Phagan case), 1 16

and police investigation, 20-21, 22, 32,
132,312

at trial, 207-8, 209, 391
Donehoo, Paul, 73, 74, 85-89, 91, 92, 96,

482-83
Donnegan, Mrs. C. D, 309
Dorsey, Brewster, Heyman and Howell, 95
Dorsey, Hugh Manson:

and Alexander, 618-19

and anti-Semitism, 509, 613

and appeal to Georgia Supreme Court,

364
and appeal to U.S. Supreme Court, 461,

465-66
autopsy ordered by, 92, 93
background of, 96
and Brown's speakers' bureau, 155
and Burns, 103,386,391,392,420
cases lost by, 94-95
and chronology, 162, 175, 197, 261,320,

329-30
civil liberties supported by, 614
closing argument of, 326-34, 335-39,

368,369,379
and commutation of sentence, 484, 489,

493-95,497
and Conley, 131, 132, 144, 146, 148, 172,

173-75* 183, 185, 189,325,381,429-30
control of investigation by, 92-94, 96,

101-2, 168-71, 187, 213
death of, 647
and defense witnesses, 262, 264, 265-67,

269-70, 273-83, 285-87, 289-96
and evidence, 180,371-72,424
execution date sought by, 375
and extraordinary motion for new trial,

384-85, 393-94, 396, 403-18, 419
and Felder episode, 1 13
and Georgia Supreme Court, 368-69
and grand jury (Phagan case), 1 13-17,

163, 168, 175, 186-87
incitement to violence, 334, 363, 495

INDEX

725

lost documents of, 647

and Lucille Frank, 167-71

and McKnights, 162-63, 165, 166, 167,

168, 169, 170
and Mince y, 183

and new trial hearings, 351, 353-64
physical appearance of, 191
and Pinkerton Agency, 1 13-14
political career of, 613-14
and postponement, 178
post-trial activities, 350, 352-53
public opinion manipulated by, 100-102
and public outbursts, 328, 335, 341, 349,

352,363
on racial injustice, 614
in rebuttal, 306-12
and retractions of statements, 373, 389,

404, 405-6, 409, 41 1-12, 416, 417
and Smith, 175, 186-87,434,437-38,

634

as solicitor general, 92, 93, 94, 95, 167,
176, 186

and trial, 191, 192, 193-202, 207-60,
264-96, 322, 323, 350, 429-30

on Tye-Peeples Motion, 421, 446

vacation of, 175

and verdict, 340, 341

and voir dire, 193-95

witnesses called by, 196-260,389
Dorsey, Hugh Manson, Jr., 645
Dorsey, James, 647
Dorsey, Jasper, 5 17-18, 626, 645
Dorsey, John Tucker:

and abduction plans, 513, 516, 521

background of, 516-18

clemency opposed by, 484, 485, 486

and coroner's inquest, 587

descendants of, 645

and grand jury (Frank case), 588-89

Haney supported by, 620-21

as killer, 5 17, 6 19-20

Milledgeville visits of, 543-44, 553

on Penitentiary Committee, 518, 539-40,
543-44,551,553,554,556

political career of, 518, 619-20, 621
Dorsey, Rufus T., 95
Dorsey, Tommy, 637
Dougherty, George S., 461
Dreyfus, Alfred, 346, 446, 578
Du Bois, W.E.B., 120, 126, 127
Duffy, J. E., 308, 389, 413-14, 416
Duveen, Joseph, 38

Eagan,John J.,57
Earle, David, 523

East Lake Country Club, Atlanta, 108, 109

Eberhard-Faber, Germany, 10

Edison, Thomas A., 388

Eighteenth Amendment, 632

Eighth Avenue Temple, Brooklyn, 577

Eisenhower, D wight D., 624

Elder, C. D.: in lynch gang, 528

Eliot, George, 97

Elsas, Oscar, 1 1, 187, 394

Elya, Charles, 533

Ennis, J. H., 562

Epps, George, 99

at coroner's inquest, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79, 87,
197

and grand jury (Phagan case), 114

and Mrs. Coleman's statement, 1 14, 179,
197

statement retracted by, 373, 385, 389,
415,417,418

on streetcar with Mary, 73, 312

at trial, 197-99, 266, 270-71
Epps, Vera, 36, 270-7 1
Epstein, Harry, 12
Evans, Beverly, 368
Evans, Eli, 12,608
Everybody's Magazine, 466

Fairfax, Beatrice, 41

Faneuil Hall, Boston, protest meetings in,
477,578

Farkas, Mack, 350-5 1 , 356

Farley, James A., 619

Farrar, Geraldine, 474~75, 480, 533, 535

February, C. Gay, 50, 55
and Conley's statements, 131, 134, 138
and Felder episode, 107-8, 109
and McKnight's statement, 163

Feibelman, Clarence, 616

Felder, Ann, 104-5

Felder, Thomas B., 104-13
and anti-Semitism, 106, 1 1 1, 1 12-13
and Burns Agency, 104, 106, 1 12, 1 13
and Coleman affidavit, 106-8
and Colyar, 107-12
police sting against, 107-9, 110-11,112,

113

and stock market scandal, 105

subscription drive of, 106-7
Ferguson, Helen:

on Burke's interrogation, 412, 416, 420

on Conley's behavior, 378

Phagan family notified by, 23, 76, 235

statement about Mary's pay, 273, 280,
281,299,332,378,494
First Amendment, 614

726

INDEX

First Congregational Church, Atlanta,

125-27,150,257
First Hundred Years, The (Marietta

history), 619
Fish, William D., 368, 370
Fisher, Mary Delaney, 482
Flak, P. A., 104
Flowers, Eulah May, 119
Flythe, William, 42, 584
Foot, Cone & Belding, 367
Ford, Henry, 388, 609, 615
Formby, Nina, 1 14-15, 179, 188, 372
Forrest, Nathan Bedford, 586, 606
Fort Smith Academy, Dahlonega, 636-40,

641
Forward, 573
Foss, Eugene, 477, 482
Fourteenth Amendment, 455, 467
Frank, Leo Max:
activities on day of murder, 9, 16, 47-48,

50-51,85-87, 100-101, 162-65, 167-68,

282, 283-84, 287-88, 299, 303, 314-15,

329-33, 336, 372, 490, 494, 495, 500
and anti-Semitism, 112-13,321,453
arrest of, 60, 61-70, 336
background of, 299

burial ot 573-79

and Burns, 386, 400-401

business consulting by, 349

character ot 85-90, 1 15, 192, 261, 276,
282, 284, 286-87, 290, 291-97, 304,
306-11,312,313-14,316-18,319,
32 1-22, 327-30, 354, 359-^0, 362, 363,
387, 389, 392-93, 400, 405, 41 1, 414, 479

circumstantial evidence against, 97, 1 15,
1 17, 184, 233, 318, 322, 335, 359

condition of body, 566, 569, 571, 576

Conley's statements about, 131-32,

134-35, 137, 138-43, 148, I7I-73
and coroner's inquest, 85-87, 96
coroner's inquest into death ot 586-88
Creen's attack on, 546-50, 55 1, 554-55,

558,567
dental X rays ot 617, 647
evidence destroyed in case ot 618, 647
execution dates set for, 375-77, 455,

473-74,498,499
executive clemency for, 376, 402, 421,

443, 447, 459, 468, 469-72, 480-86,

488-502
final acts of, 565
grand jury hearing on death ot 588-89,

593
grand jury indictment in Phagan case,
113, 1 15-17, 132-33, 163, 168, 183, 187

health ot 529, 533, 550, 556-57, 558-59
innocence protested by, 376-77, 470, 473,

482
in jail, 88, 188, 341-42, 349, 365, 37 1, 423,

460, 474-75, 486, 499, 502-3, 529~35,

545-46,558-60
and Jewish community, 1 1, 74, 79-80, 87,

327
letters of support for, 382
lynching ot 561-72
and murder notes, 34, 64, 284
notified of murder, 24-27, 32
as pencil company superintendent, 9-10,

80, 232, 272, 299-303
personality ot 80, 213, 302, 487, 555~56,

590,648
physical appearance ot 10, 85, 193
plans for abduction of, 513-28
and police investigation, 24-32, 48-51,

53,65-67,69-70
posthumous pardon sought for, 645, 648
public relations support ot 375, 377-85,

388, 393, 396, 444-46, 456-57, 459,

461-63, 466, 474-78, 486-87, 535
public sentiment against, 335, 503-5
reopening of case, 645-49
request for new trial, 376-77, 388, 419
right to due process, 421, 446-48, 449,

450, 45 1 , 455-56, 459, 46o, 463-66,

467
Rosser as lawyer to, 49-5 1, 66, 67,

166-67, 177-78,217,289,305,323,353,

493,642
salacious rumors about, 72-79, 88-90,

113-15, 166, 168, 171,286-87,317-18,

349-50,376,496
as Silent Man in the Tower, 88
and Smith's second thoughts, 437
statements made by, 60, 66, 69, 297-305,

312, 329, 335, 340, 376, 448, 450,

451-52,464,470
state's files lost in case ot 647
in Swiss Alps, 37 1

trial ot see Phagan, Mary, murder trial
violation of civil rights of, 649
wife ot see Frank, Lucille Selig
Frank, Lucille Selig, 41 1-12
activities on day of murder, 164, 307,

336
ashes ot 628-29
and commutation hearings, 480-81, 483,

488,536
courtship of Leo and, 80-84
death of, 628
depression of, 536, 627-28

INDEX

727

and execution date, 473-74

family of, 10-11,81,82

and film, 536, 537-38

financial arrangements of, 557

friends of, 34

and guilty verdict, 342

health of, 596, 627-28

and husband's arrest, 67

and husband's burial, 575, 577

on husband's innocence, 170-71

and husband's public statements, 462,

535
and husband's wedding ring, 565, 596,

628
leaving Atlanta, 608-9
marriage of, 84-85, 537
and Milledgeville, 532, 533
in mourning, 596-97, 601-2, 627
notified of murder, 24-25, 26
personality of, 81
public statements by, 167-71
return to Atlanta, 626-28
and trial, 190, 192, 193, 194, 240, 246, 287,

305,306,333,340
visits to husband, 67, 164-65, 188,303-4,

335-36, 349, 350, 365, 419, 423, 468,

475, 483, 486, 499, 546, 550, 556-57,

559-6o
Frank, Moses, 10, 294-95, 330, 359, 365,

394,532
Frank, Rae (Rachel), 10, 597, 601
death of, 618
and film, 536

and Lucille's departure, 608-9
and son's burial, 576
and trial, 190, 192, 240, 246, 286, 287,

294-95, 306, 326, 333, 342, 354
Frank, Rudolph, 10, 295, 575-76, 577
Frank v. Mangum, 463-66, 467
Frey, William J.:
clemency opposed by, 485
and lynching site, 564-66, 587
noose tied by, 528, 564
suicide of, 624
Frey's Gin:
Frank lynched in, 564-65, 594, 619
Frank's body removed from, 569-71
list of participants at, 626
mob hysteria in, 567-70
pictures taken at, 571, 595, 625
tree whitewashed in, 619
witnesses' arrival in, 565-67
Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill, 5, 7, 1 1, 14,

187,394
Funke, John, 308

Fuss, Julia, 293

Fyffe, Col. James Perry, 426, 434, 436

Gangs of New York, The (Asbury), 42
Gann, Gordon:

and abduction plans, 525

clemency opposed by, 485

and coroner's inquest, 587

and lynching, 560, 564
Gantt, James Milton, 63, 281, 494

activities on day of murder, 47-48, 51,
52-53, 86, 200, 202, 203, 3 15, 336

arrest of, 37, 218

and grand jury (Phagan case), 1 16

release of, 62, 226

statement about Becker's desk, 413, 416

at the trial, 223-24, 225, 332-33
Garfinkle, Sadie, 476
Garner, Newton, 1 13, 138, 191, 265
Garrett, Garet, 346, 347, 367, 373, 535, 590,

592-93
Garrison, Bob, 526
Gary, Elbert H., 38
Gentry, George, 1 1 1
George V, king of England, 156-57
Georgia:
anti-Catholicism in, 7, 8, 603
anti-Semitism in, 7, 462, 509, 557~58,

591-92,597-99,648
boycotts of products from, 578-79
child labor in, 6-8, 15-16, 590, 599
constitution of, 478, 484, 502
convict lease system in, 53 1
defendant's statement in capital case in,

297-98
disease in, 5
as dry state, 59, 176
executive clemency advocates in, 478
executive clemency opponents in,

484-86,490-91
extradition requests from, 579, 613
Fifth Regiment, 504, 506, 5 10, 5 1 1
and Frank's constitutional rights, 649
guerrilla mission into, 579, 580, 593
investigations in, 584-89
Jewish community in, 7; see also Jewish

community
Ku Klux Klan in, 586, 605-7, 613,

615-16,623,624,628
lynch law in, 122, 490-91, 508, 51 0-1 1,
513, 556, 558, 567, 573-75, 577, 580-82,
583-84, 586-87, 614, 615, 624, 649
martial law in, 504, 506
migration from farms in, 5
motto of, 478

728

INDEX

Georgia: (continued)
opponents of clemency in, 487
outsiders resented by, 348, 397, 403, 457,
462-63, 481, 485, 487, 500, 506, 59i-93>
619
renegade spirits in, 5 14
Stone Mountain in, 314, 607
violent protests against commutation in,

503-5,510
Watson supporters in, 400, 487, 514, 527,
543,559,599,601
Georgia Board of Health, 539
Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles,

645,647,648
Georgia House Penitentiary Committee,

518,539-40,551,553,556
Georgia Military Institute, 519
Georgia Power Company, 15
Georgia Prison Commission, 499, 613
and abduction plans, 513, 543-44
and commutation petition, 471, 473, 475,

477-78, 479, 480-86, 487, 488
and Frank's lynching, 584, 585
and grand jury, 588
and investigations, 585, 586
Marietta delegation to, 485-86, 513, 586
and prison conditions, 544, 551, 555
Georgia Railway and Electric Company,
15, 42, 137, 147, 149-50, 167, 171, 275
Georgia Supreme Court:
appeals to, 349, 364, 366, 368-70, 386,

393,419,421,443,464
and application for clemency, 482
and Bill of Exceptions, 368-69
and Brief of Defendant in Error, 369
Brief of Evidence to, 386
case returned by, 375, 458, 493
denials of appeals to, 369-70, 371, 383,

446-47
and judge's admission of uncertainty,

365,481
Reply Brief for Plaintiff in Error, 369
and Tye-Peeples Motion, 421, 446-47
and U.S. Supreme Court, 447, 448-49,

464
Gershon, George A., 1 16, 532
Gheesling, Will, 22, 27-28, 34, 1 16, 21 1, 385,

404
Glover, Arthur, 383-84
Glover, Mary (Conley), 612, 646
Gober, Annie, 623
Goering, Hermann, 626
Goldstein, Max, 290, 618
Goldwyn, Samuel, 474
Goodman, Lillie Mae, 298

Gordon, George, 163

Goss, Paul, 191,193

Gottheimer, Harry, 279

Gould, Elmer R., 646, 647

Gould, John, 648

Grace, Daisy, 94

Grace, Eugene, 94

Grady, Henry, 14, 123

Grady Hospital, Atlanta, 11

Graham, Walter, 69

Graves, John Temple, 40

Gray, James R.,41, 380-82, 471, 519, 535,

589
Great Depression, 635
Great Locomotive Chase, 401
Green, Ben, 121
Green, Bert, 200, 201, 207, 210, 243, 267,

268,349
Green, Will, 180-81
Greenberg & Bond Funeral Home,

Atlanta, 570-71
Greer, Bobby Lou, 622
Gregory, Thomas, 603, 604-5
Gresham, James, 78
Grice, Warren, 465
Griffin, Maggie, 308-9, 3 1 1
Griffith, D.W., 606
Guggenheimer, Untermeyer and Marshall,

346
Guthman,A. L., 116

Haas, Aaron, 13

Haas, Arthur, 98

Haas, Bea, 616

Haas, Caroline, 12

Haas, Herbert, 49, 98, 176, 289, 499

and Burns, 386, 398

and execution date, 473

and executive clemency, 470

and extraordinary motion for new trial,
406,408,410-11

and Frank's burial, 575

and fund-raising for defense, 374, 394,

4H,557

and new trial hearings, 353, 365

and Pinkerton agency, 225

and police investigational

and public sentiment, 374, 397, 535, 536,
616-17

and Smith's second thoughts, 437

and the trial, 191, 217-18
Haas, Isaac, 98
Haas, Jacob, 83
Haas, Joseph (banker), 12
Haas, Joseph (lawyer), 616-17

INDEX

729

Haas, Leonard, 386, 398, 499, 532
and executive clemency, 443, 470, 481
and extraordinary motion for new trial,

378, 403, 406, 408, 416-17
and new trial hearings, 353, 365
and Prison Commission hearing, 473

Hall, Charlie, 52

Hall, Corinthia, 85, 135, 139, 242, 253,
282-83,301,319

Hall, Hattie, 85, 278-79, 283, 301

Hamby, Horace: in lynch gang, 528

Hames, Luther, 5 16, 589, 622, 623, 625

Hammond, John W., 553, 554, 555, 599

Hancock, Thomas, 275-76

"Hands up!": coining of term, 530

Haney, Dorothy (Smith), 527, 528, 605,
625

Haney, Golmer, 528, 580

Haney, Lawrence:
as drinker, 620
list of names written by, 626
in lynch gang, 527, 528, 625
and lynching, 561, 562, 580
patronage jobs for, 620-21
reward given to, 605

Harding, Warren G., 6 1 2

Hardwick, Thomas, 524, 605

Harris, Henry Fauntleroy:
autopsies performed by, 91-93, 1 15,
233-34, 236, 258, 261-62, 275, 276, 284,
308,404
and further evidence, 371 , 372, 381 , 385,

417-18,419,424,497,502
and grand jury (Phagan case), 1 15, 1 16
Milledgeville visit by, 539
and time of death, 258, 261, 308, 349
at the trial, 233-34, 257-58, 262, 276, 337

Harris, Joel Chandler, 433, 563

Harris, L. M, 546-47, 549

Harris, Nathaniel E.:
and Cohen case, 552
and Creen's attack, 548, 554
and executive clemency, 472
on Frank case as past history, 513
and Frank's lynching, 582-86, 603, 615
inauguration of, 509-1 1
and mob violence, 5 10-1 1
as new governor, 471, 513, 551
political ambition of, 604-5
political ties of, 552-53, 605
and prison farm, 538, 544, 551-56, 599
and Watson, 552, 603, 604-5, 613

Harris, Walter, 556

Haslett,B.B.:
and Frank's arrest, 60, 64, 66

and grand jury (Phagan case), 116

and police investigation, 48, 51
Hatikva,6o8
Hawkins, E.E., 195
Haywood, William "Big Bill," 445
Hazan, Isaac, 352, 357
Hearst, Millicent, 6
Hearst, William Randolph, 6, 23, 472

and anti-Semitism, 100

commutation supported by, 491

empire of, 38, 456-57, 461-62

financial interests of, 100

presidency sought by, 39-40, 44

San Simeon castle of, 38

sensational journalism of, 35, 36-37,
38-39, 41-42, 45, 78, 94, 97, 99

andSlaton,43,5i2

social life of, 38, 100

and Spanish- American War, 38-39, 43

as The Chief, 38
Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, 12
Hebrew Orphans' Home, Atlanta, 11,34,

348
Hellman, Lillian, 621
Hemmett,WW, 194
Hempel, Frieda, 16
Hendley, Rev. A. C, 487
Henslee, Atticus H., 195,350-52,353,354,

355-56, 361, 362, 368, 369, 613
Henson, Allen Lumpkin, 647
Herndon, Alonzo F, 125, 127
Herndon, Angelo, 614
Herrick, D. Cady, 442
Hester (watchman), 561
Hewell, Dewey, 291, 310, 312, 322, 332, 389,

416
Heyman, Arthur, 96, 98, 290
Hicks, George, in lynch gang, 528, 566
Hicks, Grace, 23, 76, 213-16, 322
Hicks, J. B., 47
Higdon,J.F,i95
Higginbotham,T. N., 482
Hill, Benjamin H.:

execution date set by, 455, 473-74

and extraordinary motion for new trial,
375-77, 383, 385, 396, 398, 403, 406-7,
409-10, 415, 418, 419, 420, 446

on Tye-Peeples Motion, 421-22, 423
Hill, Charles Dougherty, 95, 153-54, 155
Hill, M. Warner, 368
Hill, Robert A.:

as grand jury foreman, 588-89

lynch gang funded by, 528, 620

shooting by, 620
Hine, Lewis, 7

730

INDEX

Hirsch, Joseph, ii, 1 06, 112

Holcombe, A. J., 174-75

Hollis,W.T.,266,3i2

Holloway, E. R, 47, 1 19, 128, I33~34, 136,

141, 183, 229-30, 240, 269-70, 272
Holmes, Ida (employee), 298
Holmes, Mrs. (dreamer), 78
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 448-49, 450,

451,458,464,467-68,534
Hooker, John J., 644-45
Hooper, Frank, 175, 183
closing arguments by, 313-15, 316
and defense witnesses, 268, 271, 278,

284-85, 292
and new trial hearings, 353, 361-62
and prosecution witnesses, 203, 210
at the trial, 191,307,322,325,326,331,
340
Hopkins, Daisy, 245, 247, 258, 265-66, 269,

271-72,306,436-37
Hopkins, Stiles, 191, 192, 340
Hoppe, Laura Margaret, 516
House, Robert, 114

House Un-American Activities Commit-
tee (HUAC), 621, 624-25
Houston Chronicle, 449
Howard, J. W. (pseud.), 412
Howard, William Schley, 481 , 482-84,
485, 486, 489-90, 494, 495-96, 497-98,
501
Howell, Clark, 41, 589
Howell, Robert E. Lee:
and Burns in Marietta, 402, 403
and Frank's lynching, 527, 568-69, 571,

576,589
Huber, Charles, 339
Hughes, Charles Evans, 467-68
Hummel, Abe, 327
Humphries, John, 612
Hunter, Joel, 277-78
Hurt, Candler and Grant buildings, 13
Hurt, J. W:

at coroner's inquest, 73

at postmortem examinations, 32, 91,
262

and time of death, 116

at the trial, 235-37

Illinois Central Railroad, 387

Illinois Federation of Colored Women's

Clubs, 573
Innis, James, 417
International Association of Police Chiefs,

59,420
International Workers of the World, 445

Invisible Empire (Ku Klux Klan), 586,

605-7, 615-16, 623, 624, 628
Iron Workers Union, 387
Irwin, Florence, 423

Jackson, Gordie, 287

Jackson, Irene, 296, 298, 311, 328, 338, 354,

359
Jackson, James, 512
Jackson, Marion, 57
Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 582
Jarrett, Dave, 622
Jefferson, Mrs. George, 229
Jeffersonian:

audience for, 400, 487, 5 14, 527, 543, 559,

599,601
circulation of, 543, 601, 603
editorials in, see Watson, Thomas E.
Jeffries, W.M., 195
Jew of Malta, The (Marlowe), 453
Jewish community:

anti-Semitism against, see anti-Semitism
assimilation as desire of, 12, 607-8
in Atlanta, 10, 1 1-13, 34, 74, 79-80, 82,
87,97-100,113,192,289,290-91,313,
327, 348, 356-57, 597, 607-8, 616-19,
628
as defense witnesses, 192, 290-91
justice sought by, 578-79, 591
low profile of, 607-8, 616-19
in New York, 365-67, 395, 419-20,

577-79
Orthodox, 12,608
outsiders, 374-75, 591
restrictions against, 13
in the South, 12
support for Frank sought from, 345-48,

365-67,374,394-95
Joan, the Woman (film), 474
Johenning, Marcellus, 195, 305, 350, 351,

353,354,356,368,369
Johnson, Clarence, 308
Johnson, George, 612
Johnson, Henry Lincoln, 95
Johnson, Mrs. H. H., 309
Johnston, George, 549
Jolley,Lex,5i6
Jones, Charles G:

and Felder, 105, 106, 108, 109, 113

and prostitution, 56-59, 72

and reward fund, 60
Jones, Frances, 639
Jones, John Ashley, 285-87, 354
Jones, Lorena, 1 19, 120, 129, 145, 424, 646
Jones & Phillips Jewelers, 128

INDEX

731

Kansas City Star, 461, 462-63

Karst, Marie, 309, 389, 405, 409, 418

Kauffman, Albert, 267, 268

Kauffman, James, 627-28

Kay, Martha, 352

Kean, Mary Phagan, 645

Keeler, O. B., 42, 566-67, 596

Kendley, George, 307, 312, 316, 326, 334

Kennedy, Magnolia, 46, 216, 228, 280-81

Kern, John W., 478

Kerns, Helen, 287-88, 320, 329, 330, 359

Keystone Type Foundry, 9

King, Martin Luther, 127

Kinney, Bill, 516, 521, 588, 619, 620-21,

625-26
Kitchens, Mamie, 311, 389
Klan Krest mansion, 615
Kleagles(KKK),6i5
Klein, Milton, 79, 137, 290-91, 347, 375,

486,488,499,546
Knights of Mary Phagan, 508-9, 513
Knights Templar, 606
Krafft-Ebing, Richard Von, 369
Kraus, Adolph, 348
Kress, S. H., 9, 300

Kriegshaber, Victor Hugo, 11, 13, 1 16, 290
Kuhn, Loeb and Company, 365
Ku Klux Klan, 586, 605-7, 613, 615-16, 623,

624, 628

Lake Placid Club, New York, 346
Lamar, Joseph R., 447-48, 451, 458, 459-60
Lancaster, California, Newt Morris in,

522-24
Lane, Alfred J., 284
Lanford, Newport A.:
and Burns, 103, 392

and Conley, 131, 132, 133, 137, 138, 140,
141, 143, 146, 171-75, 189, 238,325,
336,424
and coroner's inquest, 74
and Dorsey, 92, 93, 101, 169
and extraordinary motion for new trial,

384
and Felder, 106-7, 109-13
and Frank's arrest, 61, 67
and Frank's character, 392-93
and McKnight, 163-64
newspaper stories about, 392
and Phagan investigation, 22, 31, 32,

48-50, 61, 66, 92, 10 1, 102, 180, 189,

201,217,329
and police brutality, 54
and police corruption, 54, 55, 107, 109
and police fighting vice, 106, 109

and Smith's second thoughts, 434, 437
and the trial, 238
Lasker, Albert D., 397, 410, 451, 462, 534
and Connolly, 445
financial support from, 367, 374~75, 377,

394-95,4H,4i7,42i,46i,48i,557,

599
promotional work of, 375, 377-78, 388,

393,456-57,472,477,535
Lassiter, Narvel, 526, 567
Lassiter, R. M., 30
Latent Klanism in Georgia, 1890-1915

(Moseley), 606
Lawlater, Tom, 56 1
League of Nations, 613
Leary, John J., 529, 579, 594-95
Lee, Charles, 6-7
Lee, James W., 526
Lee, Newt:
activities on day of murder, 21, 47, 48,

50-51, 64, 72-73, 86, 315, 490, 500
arrest of, 22, 24, 29, 3 1 , 53, 68
bloody shirt in home of, 65-66, 92, 93,

218, 221-22, 229, 315, 324, 334
born into slavery, 21
and coroner's inquest, 72-73, 96
at crime scene, 18-22, 31, 48, 64, 142, 196,

199-201,217,275
and grand jury (Phagan case), 1 16
interrogations of, 64, 66, 68-70
and murder notes, 20-21, 64-65, 101,

204,379

newspaper stories about, 65, 68-69, 97

time slip of, 31, 49-50, 65, 200, 201,
21 1-12, 213, 217, 220, 315, 324, 490

at the trial, 199-206
Lee, Robert E., 6, 159
Lefkoff, Maier, 378
Lehman, Irving, 347, 348
Lehon, Dan, 391 , 392, 397, 556

and Burns, 387, 390, 400-403

and Carter, 390, 409, 420

Dorsey 's interrogation of, 406, 410, 41 1

grand jury investigation of, 415, 420

and Illinois Central case, 387

in Marietta, 401-3

and Ragsdale, 398, 407, 411,414, 420

and retractions of statements, 416
Lemmon, Jack, 645
Leo Frank Committee, 476
Leo M. Frank Day: Chicago, 476-77
Leo M. Frank and Governor Slaton (film),

557-58,559
Levy, Albert, 290
Levy, Mrs. Albert, 288, 320, 359

732

INDEX

Liberty, 634-35, 642

Liebman, May Lou, 34

Lincoln, Abraham, 151

Lincoln, Charles, 535

Linkous, Rev. T.T.G., 61

Lippman, Martin, 635

Little, W. A., 547

Little Foxes, The (Hellman), 621

Loeb, Julian, 34

Loew, Marcus, 558

Longstreet, James, 15

Lord & Thomas agency, 367

Los Angeles Examiner, 38

Los Angeles Times:
bombing of, 102-3, 387, 445
and Newt Morris story, 523-24

Louisiana, Roman law in, 464

Louisville Courier-Journal, 449-50, 582

Lovejoy, Owen R., 7

Lovenhart, H. C, 350, 356

Lowenstein, William J., 106, 112

Loyless, Thomas, 457, 478, 599-604, 609-10

Luckie Street YMCA, Atlanta, 646

Lucy Cobb Institute, Athens, 41

Lumpkin, Joseph Henry, 368

Lusitania, sinking of, 475-76

Lyons, Rabbi Alexander, 577

Mack, Joseph L., 365

Macmillan & Company, 637

Macon Telegraph, 345, 508-9, 529, 530, 545,

549, 553, 558, 582, 583, 591-92
MacWorth, W. D., 1 15, 179-80, 407
Maddox, Robert R, 154-55
magazines and newspapers, see

newspapers
Magnes, Joseph L., 347
Magnolia Cemetery, Augusta, 151
Maine, sinking of, 37, 39, 43
Malone,T.R.,76,77
Mangum, Wheeler, 137, 172, 249, 463, 474,

502,544
Mann, Alonzo, 34, 85, 279, 644-45, 648
Manning, James, 625-26
Manning, Marie, 41
Marcus, Alan, 607, 627, 628-29
Marcus, Alexander E., 10, 34, 67, 499, 532,

575
Marcus, Fanny, 627-28
Marcus, Harold, 34, 627, 628-29
Marcus & Holley, 607
Maria Rose (film), 474, 535
Marietta:

abduction plans in, 513-28, 538-40, 545

anti-Semitism in, 509

Burns and Lehon in, 401-3, 485, 527
clemency opposed in, 484-86, 490-91,

586
committee members in, 485, 513
crowd at governor's mansion from,

504-5
crowd to view Frank's lynch site, 566-67
first mission aborted in, 544-45
Frey's Gin as lynch site near, 564-65
history of, 619
investigations discouraged in, 401-3,

580-82,583,593-94,603
Knights of Mary Phagan in, 508-9, 513
Larry Bell Park in, 620
lynch gang recruited in, 526-28
lynch gang sought in, 579, 580
lynching as defining event in, 619
Phagan name in, 4
postlynching quiet in, 579-80
renegade spirits in, 514
Watson supporters in, 527

Marietta Board of Trade, 509

Marietta Chair Company, 519

Marietta Journal, 485, 504, 5 16, 52 1 , 579,
588,619,620,626

Marietta Vigilance Committee, 509

Marshall, Edward, 388

Marshall, Louis, 419-20
and American Jewish Committee, 346,

365-66
on anti-Semitic writings, 463, 603
appeal to U.S. Supreme Court justices,

447, 460-61, 463-65, 466
and executive clemency, 472, 473
financial appeals for defense fund,

346-48,367,395
on lynching, 573
taking charge of defense, 45 1 , 455,

458-59,46i
Marshall, Thomas R., 491
Marx, Rabbi David, 12, 13, 84, 176, 601
and anti-Semitism, 597, 617
and appeal to U.S. Supreme Court,

460-61
assimilation as goal of, 12, 608
and Dorsey's political career, 614
and extraordinary motion for new trial,

411,416,417
and Frank's burial, 575, 576, 577
support sought from Jewish community

by, 345-48, 367
at the trial, 290, 327
visits to Frank in jail, 341-42, 365, 370,

486,488
Marx, Eleanor, 345

INDEX

733

Mary, queen of England, 156-57
Mathewson, Matty, 42
Matthews, W. M., 266, 3 1 2
Mayes, Mace, 522-23
Mayfield, Emily, 296, 298
McAdoo, William Gibbs, 521, 616
McClatchey, Deveraux, Jr., 522, 624
McClure's, 445
McCrary, Truman, 292
McDonald, A. B., 461, 462-63
McDonald, Lula, 287
McGill,J.F.,i75
Mcintosh, Ned, 553
McKelway, Alexander J., 7
McKinley, William, 39, 157
McKinney, William, in lynch gang, 528,

585
McKnight, Albert:
as Beck & Gregg employee, 163, 165,

282,307,372
statement retracted by, 372, 389, 393-94,

404,416,418
and trial, 192, 235, 282, 288, 307
and wife's statement, 162-63, 168, 235
McKnight, Minola, 5 1 , 162-66, 320
affidavit of, 163-66, 167, 169, 192, 211,

235
attack on, 422

and husband's retraction, 416
interrogation of, 162-63, 168, 170, 282,

322
statement retracted by, 165-66, 192, 282,

372
and trial, 192, 282, 307
McLaughlin & Stern, 61 1, 632, 635
McNamara, James, 387, 445
McNamara, John, 387, 445
McNaughton, J. W, 178, 530, 546-47, 549,

550
media, see newspapers
Meeks, Aunt Rhody Ann, 530
Memoirs of a Confederate Scout and

Sharpshooter (Benson), 425
Mencken, H. L., 637
Mendenhall (tipster), 78
Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare), 347,

453
Merritt, Roger, 150
MetcaltWS.,195
Metropolitan Opera Company, 16, 23, 34,

86,474-75
Michael, Jerome, 288, 499
Michael, Julian and Philip, 34
Michael, Mrs. M.G., 288
Michael, Simon and Bud, 10, 82, 536-37

Miles, E.O., 108, 109
Milledgeville state prison farm:

budget appropriations for, 539, 544, 553,
554,556,605

film made in, 534-38

Frank attacked by Creen in, 546-48

Frank moved to, 502-3

Frank removed by lynch gang, 561-63,

585

Frank's incarceration in, 529-35,
558-60

governor's visit to, 551-56, 599

inspections of, 538-40, 55 1

lynch gang in, 560, 561

phone lines cut in, 560, 562-63, 584

plans to remove Frank from, 508-9, 513,
521, 524, 525-28, 538-40, 543-44

security in, 508, 531, 548, 555, 585, 649

setting of, 529-32

state militia and, 544-45
Miller, Charles R., 590
Miller, Ethel Harris, 378
Mills, Etta, 115, 179
Milwaukee Free-Press, 579
Milwaukee Sentinel, 449
Minar, John, 270-71
Mincey, William H., 181-83, 184, 254-55,

274,291,315,360-61
Miner, Bill, 530
Mitchell, Eugene Muse, 382
Mitchell, Margaret, 382
Montag, Harriet, 83
Montag, Sigmund, 1 1, 24, 32, 49, 80, 82, 176,

279,288-90,317,329,349
Montag family, 1 1
Montag Paper Company, 1 1, 32, 80, 278,

299,301,329,616
Mooney,C.PJ.,49i
Moore, Anne Carol, 499, 532, 533, 534, 546,

597
Moore, D.D., 491
Moore, John, 639
More, Thomas, 1 59
Morehouse College, Atlanta, 124, 127
Morgan, J. Pierpont, 105, 365
Morgan, Victor, 462
Morris, "Black Newt":

and abduction plans, 525-26, 544

background of, 525-26, 530

and chain gang, 620

and Judge Newt, 526, 625

and lynching, 560, 562, 581, 625
Morris, Fred:

and abduction plans, 513, 518, 521, 544

background of, 5 18-19

734

INDEX

Morris, Fred: (continued)

clemency opposed by, 485-86

conscience of, 625
Morris,J.G."Gid,"5i8
Morris, Newton Augustus, 402-3

and abduction plans, 513, 521, 524, 525,
526,528,540,544

background of, 521-24, 526

and "Black Newt," 526, 625

and Clay, 622-23

and coroner's inquest, 587

death of, 619

descendents of, 627

and lynching, 564, 565, 568-70, 581 ,
594-95,6i6,62i

newspaper stories about, 594-95

political career of, 524, 588, 616, 619,
621
Morris, Paul, 526, 625
Morris Construction Company, 522, 526
Morse, Charles W. "Ice King," 105
Morse Dry Dock Company, 610-1 1
Moseley, Charlton, 606
Moses, Harry, 547
Mount Carmel Cemetery, New York,

576-77
Mullinax, Arthur, 33, 37, 52, 61
"My Pa" (poem), 4

NAACP, 125, 126,606

Nash, J. Van Holt, 544, 545, 553, 554, 556

National American Woman Suffrage
Association, 573-74

National Auditing and Accounting
Company, 425

National Child Labor Committee, 7

National Meter Company, 10

National Pencil Company:
as crime scene, 18-21,30-31,46-47,52,
62, 71 , 72, 92, 96, 102, 108, 1 15-16, 134,
141-43, 196, 199-201, 204, 207-10, 215,
217, 219-20, 228-32, 267-69, 273,315,

320,371,386,389,404,411,417,454,

495,500-501,644
customers of, 9-10
elevator of, 29-30, 454, 489, 497~98,

500-1,645
financial sheet of, 272-73, 274, 275, 278,

300-303,312,494
Frank as superintendent of, 9-10, 80,

232, 272, 299-303
governor's tour of, 495
location of, 9, 72, 607
Mary's job at, 5, 8-9, 73

metal shortage in, 8-9

murder notes written on forms of,

379-8o, 389, 412-13, 416, 419
owners of, 10, 11,24
Pinkerton Detective Agency in, 62-64
police visit with Frank in, 28-31
salacious rumors about, 7 1-79
Smiths' visit to, 427-28, 436, 634
teenage girls as workers in, 16, 73, 74, 89,

100, 292-94, 295-97,310,317,599
and trial, 190
Negroes:
American Bar Association exclusion of,

633-34
and Atlanta race riot (1906), 122-24,

150,334,518

churches of, 125-27

courtroom evidence given by, 243

and desegregation, 614

Dorsey's study of injustice toward, 614

education of, 124, 125, 126, 127, 150, 152,
428,633

entrepreneurs, 124-25

expressions and folklore studies of, 379

First Amendment rights for, 614

and Jim Crow laws, 122-24, I2 7

on jury duty, 195

justice for, 121-22, 127, 149, 632-34

lynchings of, 122, 574

and mulattoes, 126-27

NAACP and, 125, 126, 606

newspapers inciting to violence, 122-24

police brutality directed at, 54

in Republican Party, 125

stereotypes of, 120-21, 128, 141,315,
319, 324, 387, 399-400, 450, 496, 606,
613

tenant farmers, 176

voting rights of, 122

war veterans, 614
Neil, W. P., 352
Nelms, Beatrice, 423, 427
Nevin, James B., 42, 368

on circumstantial evidence, 97

and Dorsey's political career, 614

on the trial, 206, 221, 223, 237-38, 246,
260,305,344
Newman, William T., 455~56, 458, 459, 465,

467
Newman-Zilberman, Bella, 579, 593-94
New Orleans Times-Picayune, 491
Newport News Ship Building and Dry

Dock Company, 610
New Republic, 491, 548

INDEX

735

newspapers:
and anti-Semitism, 98-100, 453, 462-63,

598
cartoons in, 41
on child labor, 35-36
on commutation of sentence, 505-8
competition of, 23, 38, 39, 43, 44, 1 10, 584
on Creen's attack, 548-50, 555
extras (pinks) of, 37
facts embellished by, 36-37, 38, 39,

97-98,166, 181,381
Frank's story sought by, 534-35
history skewed by, 38-39, 42
inciting to violence, 122-24
on lynching, 574~75, 580-85
muckrackers in, 8, 38, 387, 445, 466
partisan journalism of, 41, 457
on Phagan murder, 35-38, 42-45, 67, 87,

97

photos faked by, 35

police investigations affected by, 37

profit motive of, 147

on racial topics, 120-23, 126

on U.S. Supreme Court appeal, 461-63

yellow journalism, 94

see also specific papers
New York American, 40, 461-62
New York City:

Cooper Union memorial in, 577-79

Frank's burial in, 573-77

Jewish community in, 365-67, 395,
419-20,577-79

petitions circulating in, 476, 477

Smith's law practice in, 61 1
New Yorker, The, 28
New York Herald, 456, 593, 595
New York Herald Tribune, 445
New York Journal, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 456,

577

New York Life Insurance Company,
285-87

New York Sun, 366,618

New York Times, 346, 367
on anti-Semitism, 374
on Burns in Marietta, 403
on commutation of sentence, 506
on Conley as suspect, 436
on Creen's attack, 548
on defense appeals, 446, 447
on executive clemency, 471-72
on Frank's lynching, 527, 566, 574-75,

577,583,594
fund-raising from, 394-95
on Holmes's opinion, 449

as "Jewish newspaper," 346, 592
on racial aspect of case, 450, 452
reporters for, 426, 594
silence on Frank case in, 590-93, 597
and Smith's second thoughts, 436, 437
stories favorable to defense in, 373-74,
378, 382, 387, 388, 393, 395, 419, 423,
455, 457, 461, 462, 466, 475, 476, 487,
535,541,591,593
on violence in Georgia, 508, 509
New York Times Magazine, 442
New York Tribune, 487, 529, 530, 573, 579,

594
New York World, 39, 43, 123, 449, 456, 462,

503, 512, 535, 54i, 548, 574, 577
Niles, George, 308
Nixon, Richard M., 621
Nolle, William, 360, 454, 602
Norris,J. N., 115,372
Nuremberg trials, 626

Ochs, Adolph S., 347, 392, 395, 434, 461, 535
as "outside interference," 393, 591-93
and Times, 346, 367, 373-74, 388, 426,

457,548,590,591-93
O'Connor, John, 477
Odd Fellows Building, Atlanta, 124
"Old Police Reporter, The," 97, 169,

170-71,184-85,295,297
Old World and the New, The (Ross), 452
Olmsted, Frederick Law, 1 1
Osborn, Albert S., 482
Otis, H.W., 413
Owens, William, 284-85
Ozburn,J.T., 195

Palmer, Mitchell, 613-14

Pan-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 584

Parrish, Celeste, 596

Patrick & Thompson, 128

Patterson, H. L. "Snax," 588

Patterson, Thomas E.:

on clemency, 488, 543

and Georgia Prison Commission, 481,
486,487,488

and grand jury (Frank case), 588

and lynching, 560, 562, 584

political threat to, 539

and prison conditions, 543, 553
Patterson, William J., 624
Patterson Funeral Home, Atlanta, 628
Paxon, F. J., 382
Payne, Frank, 285
Payne, J. Carroll, 77

736

INDEX

Peabody, George Foster, 609

Peace Ship, 609

Peachtree, Polly, 15,41

Peeples, Henry, 42 1 , 447, 456

Perkerson, Fred, 414-15

Perkinson,W.H.,587

Perlman, Louis and Rose, 476

Perry, Jesse, 498

Peters, Madison, 476

Pettis, Nellie, 88-89, 3°9, 389, 405, 418

Phagan, Anna Belle, 646-47

Phagan, Benjamin, 61

Phagan, Charles, 3, 61

Phagan, Elmer, clemency opposed by,

485
Phagan, Fannie, 4; see also Coleman,

Fannie Phagan
Phagan, Joshua, 3,61, 646
Phagan, Mary:
cause of death, 236
condition of body of, 19-20, 27, 34, 92,

93, 116, 233-34, 236, 262, 391, 403, 497,

617,647
day of death, 3-17, 33, 52, 62, 73, 85-86,

102, 115, 197-98,266-67,297,307,314,

320,359,501
discovery of body of, 18-20, 30, 96, 196,

200,203,273,336
friends of, 33, 73, 78, 1 14, 315
funeral of, 60-^61
lynching as vindication of, 568
murder of, see Phagan, Mary, murder

case
pay collected by, 29, 52, 62, 73, 86, 100,

197,301
pencil factory job of, 5, 29, 3 1
postmortem examinations of, 32, 91-93,

1 15> 233-34, 236, 258, 261-62, 275,

276
rumors about Frank and, 72, 73, 76, 78
time of death, 1 15, 1 16, 234, 258, 261-62,

285,297,307,349
Phagan, Mary, murder case:
anti-Semitism in, 1 12-13
autopsies, 32, 91-93, 1 J 5, 233-34, 236,

258,261-62,275,276
Burns hired in, 385-87
chronology in, 50, 1 15, 1 16, 132, 162, 197,

261-62, 266-67, 297, 307, 320, 329-30,

359,392
circumstantial evidence in, 97, 1 15, 1 17,

184, 209, 222, 233, 318, 322, 335, 359
coroner's inquest into, 72-74, 78, 85-90,

91,96
discovery of body, 18-20, 30, 96, 141

discrepancies in, 359

evidence at crime scene, 20, 22, 30-31,

46-47, 92, 108, 179-80, 207-9
Felder's use of, 106-13
grand jury for, 1 15-17, 163, 168, 175,

183-88
identification of body in, 23, 76, 213
lynching feared in, 97
magazine contest on, 634-35
murder notes, 20-21, 31-32, 34, 53,

64-65,92, 116, 119, 129, 131, 132, 133,

*35, 136, 139-40, 143, 162, 173, 204,

207,232,249,284,315,318,319,

331-32, 360, 378-80, 396, 412-13,

417, 425-26, 428-33, 437, 454, 482,

497,498
as "Negro crime," 32-33, 177
newspaper stories about, 35-38, 42-45,

52,67,87,101-2
notification of family, 23-24
police investigation of, 18-22, 24-34, 9 2 ,

102
political factions in, 1 12-13
private investigators in, 62-63, IQI
public stories and rumors in, 33, 5 1-53,

163
rewards offered in, 37, 5 1-52, 60, 23 1 ,

270,285,318,334,372,392
suspects in, 21-22, 33, 37, 47-48, 53,

61-70, 101, 183; see also Conley,

James; Frank, Leo Max; Lee, Newt
trial in, see Phagan, Mary, murder trial
vengeance sought in, 61, 568
Phagan, Mary, murder trial:
amended motion in, 35 1-52, 363-65,

368
anti-Semitism introduced into, 3 12, 3 16,

320-2 1 , 326-27, 328-29, 330-3 1 ,

333-34, 345-46, 347, 358-59, 361, 362,

366,453
appeal to U.S. Supreme Court, 460-61,

463-66,467
appeals to local courts, 347-50, 368-70,

371,423
Arnold's closing arguments in, 3 16-21
atmosphere of, 210-1 1, 257, 307, 352,

362-63, 381, 421, 448, 449, 450, 458,

463,464,468,478
Bill of Exceptions in, 364
change of venue requested for, 361
charge to jury, 339-40
commutation of sentence in, 502
Conley as hero of, 343-44
defense in, 191, 261-305
Dorsey's closing arguments in, 326-39

INDEX

737

execution dates set in, 377
extraordinary motion for new trial,

375-77, 378, 383, 384-85, 388-90, 393,

395-99,403-19,423,446
and Georgia Supreme Court, 368-70,

464
Hooper's closing arguments in, 3 13-15
illegal evidence in, 253, 287
incitement to violence in, 334-35, 355,

363, 449, 450, 45 1 , 463, 468, 490
judge in, see Roan, Leonard S.
juror bias charged in, 350-52, 355~57,

361,362-63,368,369,382
length of, 297

motion for certification in, 458
motion for mistrial in, 237, 339-40
new trial hearings in, 343, 348-52,

353-65,465
opening of, 192-94
pencil factory diagram in, 200-201, 205,

207,243,268,349
photographers in, 199
prosecution in, 190-260
public outbursts in, 257, 307, 316, 328,
335, 339, 34i , 343, 349, 352, 354~55,
363,369,381,448,449,463
racist remarks in, 292, 319-20, 324,

325-26,450,484,496
reasonable doubt in, 501-2, 505, 506
rebuttal in, 306-13
retractions in, 372-73, 385, 389, 404-6,

409,411-12,416,417
Rosser's closing arguments in, 321-26
sentencing in, 342-43
swearing of witnesses in, 192
venue of, 191
verdict in, 340-42, 355~56
voir dire in, 193-95
writ of error sought in, 450-5 1, 452, 455,

458,460
writ of habeas corpus sought in, 455-56,
458,459,466,467
Phagan, Ollie, 3, 61, 333
Phagan, William Jackson (grandfather), 4,

3&-37,45,486
Phagan, William Joshua (father), 4, 23-24
Philadelphia Inquirer, 449
Phillips, John R., 52
Phillips, N.Taylor, 578
Pickett, Ernest H., 163, 307
Piedmont Driving Club, Atlanta, 13, 16,59,

176
Pinkerton Detective Agency, 102
and Burns Agency, 103-4
and Conley, 128-29

and evidence at crime scene, 179-80,
225

and Frank's arrest, 64

and Frank's character, 75-79, 1 13-14

hiring of, 62, 289-90, 323

Scott as agent with, 62-64
Pirk, Mary, 292-93
Pitney, Mahlon, 464, 467
police department, see Atlanta Police

Department
Pollard, C.E., 277-78
Pond, Frank, 102, 113
Poole, Max, 5
Populist Party, 8
Poteat, Edwin M., 7
Powell, Arthur, 478, 618, 627
Prater, Rachel, 287
Pride, Arthur, 292
Proctor, Rev. Henry Hugh, 125-27, 150,

257,633
Provincials, The (Evans), 12,608
Psychopathia Sexualis (Krafft-Ebbing),

369
PwcA:,462,54i,559
Pulitzer, Joseph, 43, 466, 541-42
Pyron,R.B.,52

Quinn, Lemmie, 46, 87, 100, 240, 285, 320,
329,330

Ragsdale, Rev. C. B., 396, 398, 399, 400,
403, 407-8, 410, 41 1,414, 420

Rainey, Eugene Leigh:
and Georgia Prison Commission, 481,

488
and grand jury (Frank case), 588
and lynching, 560, 562, 584, 585
political threat to, 539
and prison conditions, 543, 553

Rajahs of Rhythm, 636, 637

Red Cross, International, 609

Reese, Frank, 414-15

Reid, Hal (James Hallek), 534-38, 557, 559

Reid, Wallace, 474, 535

Remington, Frederic, 39

Reuf,Abe,327

Rich, Mary, 389, 41 1-12, 416

Rich, Walter, 13, 100

Richardsonian Romanesque
architecture, 9

Rich family, 1 1

Richmond, Benjamin A., 603

Richmond Times-Dispatch, 582

Rich's Department Store, Atlanta, 1 1, 22

Roan, J. T., 481-82

738

INDEX

Roan, Leonard S.:
admissions of uncertainty by, 364-65,

368-69,370,469-70
charge to jury by, 339-40
and Conley, 172, 173-74
and defense witnesses, 274, 278, 282, 286,

287,289,291,293
executive clemency urged by, 469-70,

479, 481-82, 486, 487, 502
and Georgia Supreme Court, 369-70
illness and death of, 469, 479
and legal precedents, 257
and mistrial motions, 237, 339-40, 343
newspaper shown to jury by, 236-37
and new trial hearings, 349, 351, 353-55,

357-65,458
postponement granted by, 178
post-trial celebrations by, 350
and prosecution witnesses, 197, 201, 203,

204-5, 208, 209-1 1, 216, 217, 221, 222,

224-25, 228, 234, 239, 246, 249, 252-53,

255,257
and reading of verdict, 340
and sentencing, 341, 342-43
and swearing of witnesses, 192
as trial judge, 190-91, 246, 255, 287, 302,
306, 307, 308-9, 334, 335, 349, 357~58,
361, 369-70, 383, 421, 465, 493
and verdict, 341
and voir dire, 194
Robeson, L. B., 528
Robinson, Ruth, 3 10, 3 12, 322, 389, 41 1
Rockefeller, John D., 124, 126, 127
Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 637
Rockefeller, Laura Spelman, 124
Rodgers, Julian S., 382
Rogers, W.W. "Boots":
and notification of families, 23-24
payment to, 41 1
and police investigation, 20, 23-29, 31,

201,217,312,407
at the trial, 21 1-13, 338
Roman law, 464

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 609-10, 619
Roosevelt, Theodore, 39, 125, 126,445,477,

486
Rosenberg, Howard, 342, 547, 549, 550
Rosenfield, Abraham, 345
Rosenthal, Herman, 327
Rosenwald, Julius, 367, 375, 394, 477, 532
Ross, Edward A., 452
Ross, Harold, 27, 28, 32, 41, 92, 121, 146,

381,506
Rosser, Brandon, Slaton & Phillips, 15,
349,405

Rosser, Luther Z.:
and amended motion, 348-49, 351-52,

363-65
and appeals, 364, 421, 465
and Arnold, see Arnold, Reuben R.
and Burns, 386, 398
and chronology, 197
closing arguments by, 321-26
and Conley, 171-74, 178, 180-81, 183-87
death of, 616
and defense witnesses, 261, 262-64,

289-91,293-95,297
and Dorsey family, 96
and execution date, 473
and executive clemency, 470
and extraordinary motion, 375-77, 398,

406,417-18
and Felder scheme, 1 12, 1 13
as Frank's lawyer, 49-51, 66, 67, 166-67,

177-78, 217, 289, 305, 323, 353, 493, 642
Frank's letters to, 532, 534
and Frank supporters, 176
and Georgia Railway case, 137, 147, 167,

171
and Georgia Supreme Court, 368-70
and Grace case, 94
and grand jury (Phagan case), 1 16-17,

185, 186-87
and Harris, 605
law firm of, 15, 49, 187, 394, 402, 471, 480,

593,645
and McKnight, 167
and Mincey, 181, 183
on new evidence, 371-72
and new trial hearings, 348-49, 353-63
personal traits of, 49, 96
and police investigation, 49-51, 66
and prosecution witnesses, 196-98,

202-10, 212-22, 224-30, 239, 243-56
and rebuttal, 307-12
and retractions of statements, 372-73
and sentencing, 342-43
and Smith's second thoughts, 437
and Times stories, 374
and trial, 191, 192, 196-256, 261-64,

289-97,305,313,314,315,319,326,

334,349,428,493,494
Rosser, Luther Z., Jr., 96, 191, 340, 616
Rosser, Sarah Dorsey, 96, 616
Runyon, Damon, 38
Russell, Richard B., 519
Russell, Richard B., Jr., 519

Sanders, H.F., 439

San Francisco Bulletin, 574

INDEX

739

San Francisco Call, 506

San Francisco Examiner, 38, 39

Saturday Evening Post, 634

Saul &Abelson, 128

Savannah Press, 582

Sayre,Zelda,5i4

Schenck,V.F.,72

Schenck Brothers Machine Shop, 9, 72

Schiff, Herbert, 62, 128, 136, 141, 271-75,

280,349,416,533
Schiff, Jacob H., 365-66, 395
Schlacht, Harry, 579
Schwartz, Dale, 645, 648
Scott, Harry:

and Black, 62-63, 64, 75

and Burns Agency, 103, 104

conflict of interests, 62-63, 225, 226, 407

and Conley, 118, 127, 128-33, 136-38,
140, 141, 142, 189

and coroner's inquest, 96

and Dorsey, 92

and Frank interviews, 86, 494

and Frank's arrest, 64, 66, 67-70

and Frank's character, 75-79

hired by Frank, 62-64

lack of progress by, 96, 100, 103

and Lee, 304

and prejudice, 453

at the trial, 224-27, 262-65
Sears Roebuck & Company, 367
Seely, Fred, 40

Selig, Emil, 10, 81, 84, 86, 283, 349, 629
Selig, Josephine Cohen, 283-84, 307, 629
Selig, Rosalind (Ursenbach), 627
Selig, Simon, 81

Sentell, Edgar L., 33, 37, 52, 61-62
Sessions, Lucille, 5 16, 521, 625
Sessions, Moultrie:

and anti-Semitism, 509

clemency opposed by, 485, 490
Shakespeare, William, 347, 453
Shaw, J. F "Coon," 403, 528, 587, 626
Shelton,Tom,6i6
Sherborne, Robert, 644
Sherman, William Tecumseh, 37
Shipp, John, 352
Shurman, Mrs. A., 352
Sibley, Celestine, 627
Sibley, H.B., 76
Siegel, Isaac, 579
Silverman, Virginia, 34
Simmons, Lula, 389, 404, 405
Simmons, Oscar, 191, 193
Simmons, William Joseph, 606-7, 615
Skipper, E.S., 33, 52

Slaton, John M.:
achievements of, 488
brief return to Atlanta, 609
and conflict of interests, 402, 471-72,

48o,557,59i,593
deliberation of, 498-50 1,512
departure of, 5 1 1-1 2, 5 13
documentary footage of, 534
end of term, 471-72, 505, 5 10, 55 1
and executive clemency, 402, 421, 443,

447, 459, 468, 469-72, 474, 477, 484,

488-502, 586, 591, 600, 601, 602, 618,

648
hanged in effigy, 504, 505
at Harris's inauguration, 509-1 1
and Hearst, 43
law firm of, 15, 394, 402, 420, 471-72, 480,

593,645

and lynching, 574, 581

martial law declared by, 504, 506

and newspapers, 471, 503, 540-41, 597

petitions to, 477

political hopes of, 524, 600

reasonable doubt of, 501-2, 505, 506

in San Francisco, 584

social life of, 14, 100, 488-89

statement of conscience of, 5 1 1

television movie on, 645

and threat of violence, 335, 503-5, 508,
509-11,528,597
Slaton, Sallie Grant, 14-15, 100, 104,489,

510,512,540-41,609
Slaton, William, 127
Small, Iona, 293

Smith, Carrie, 309, 389, 405, 409
Smith, Claude, 93, 229
Smith, Dora, 159-60

Smith, Dorothy Haney, 527, 528, 605, 625
Smith, Frank (son), 156, 635-36, 637, 642
Smith, F.V.L., 195, 352
Smith, Hoke, 41, 155, 176, 383-84, 520, 613
Smith, J. E., 53 1

and Creen's attack, 547

and Frank's incarceration, 532, 549, 559

and lynching, 543, 561, 562, 585

and prison conditions, 539, 553

as warden, 5 13, 5 18
Smith, Mary Lou (daughter), 156, 634-35,

636,643
Smith, Mary Lou Baker (wife):

career of, 632, 635

children of, 610, 61 1, 635-36, 642

and Fort Smith Academy, 637-38, 643

and husband's death, 642-43

marriage of, 156

740

INDEX

Smith, Mary Lou Baker (wife): (continued)
moves of, 610-1 1, 632, 635, 637
and Nelmses' disappearance, 423
and Phagan murder notes, 43 1-33, 434,
632

Smith, Mattie, 134, 136, 240

Smith, McLellan, 35

Smith, Minnie, 298

Smith, Rebekah, 543

Smith, Walter (son), 426, 434, 610, 61 1
and father's death, 642, 643
and father's dreams, 636, 640-41
and father's memoir, 631, 632, 641

Smith, William Manning, 145-61,423-43,

630-43
and American Bar Association, 633-34
and Bums, 424, 430, 436, 438
as Conley's counsel, 145-48, 173-74, x 75>

185-86, 189, 191, 238, 249, 256, 257,

324, 337> 385, 393> 424, 426, 430-3 1,

438-39*630-31,641
in Dahlonega, 636-40
death of, 642-43
debating skills of, 151-52, 155* 158-59*

160
and Dorsey, 175, 186-87,434,437-38,

634
and double jeopardy statute, 431, 436
evidence studied by, 427-33, 437, 454,

482, 483, 497, 498, 501, 559, 632
and extraordinary motion for new trial,

404
family of, 155-56, 159-60,425,427
fantasy of, 639-4 1
and Fort Smith Academy, 636-40
and grand jury (Phagan case), 185-86
health of, 630, 63 1 , 640, 641-43
idealism of, 147, 148, 149, 150-52, 153,

156
law practice of, 153, 158, 160-61,441-42,

610-11,632
Loyless supported by, 602
memoir of, 630-32, 641-42, 643
Negro causes supported by, 148-52, 158,

161,257,632-34
and Nelmses' disappearance, 423
newspaper stories about, 435-36,

438-39,440-41
personality and physical appearance of,

152-53,440
political ambitions of, 153-55, 158
in Quebec, 156-58
second thoughts of, 147-48, 425-27,

430-3 1 > 433-43> 478, 542, 641
andSlaton,499,50i

at temperance meetings, 632
threats of violence against, 439, 610
and the trial, 191, 194, 210, 238, 266, 328,

428
and voir dire, 194

Smith, William, Sr., 159, 160

Smith House, Dahlonega, 637, 640

Sonn, R. E., 290, 327

Souls of Black Folk, The (Du Bois), 126

Southern Bell Telephone, 1 1 1, 342, 626

Southern Belting, 9

Southern Sociological Conference, 7

Spanish- American War, 38-39, 43

Speed, Keats, 42-43, 44

Spelman College, Atlanta, 124, 127

Spence, Herman, 564

Spivey, Zellie, 298

Stafford, R.E., 491

Standard Club, Atlanta, 13

Standard Life Insurance, 124

Stanton, Hermes, 298

Stanton, Judge L.,524

Starnes,John:
and Burns, 386
and Conley, 189,325
on Dorsey's staff, 92, 1 13, 162, 353, 357
and extraordinary motion for new trial,

384*404
and governor's tour, 495
and McKnight interrogation, 162
and police investigation, 24, 25, 26, 29,

31, 162, 183, 217, 229, 230, 273,318-19,

353,357»389

and Smith's second thoughts, 434

at the trial, 207, 208-9
Starr, Linton, 534~35> 550, 553
State v. Leo M. Frank, see Phagan, Mary,

murder trial
Steffens, Lincoln, 387, 444
Stephens, Ed, 191,342,351,353
Stern, Otto and Marian, 575, 577
Steunenberg, Frank, 445
St. Louis Dispatch, 466
Stone, Harlan Fiske, 442
Stone Mountain, Georgia, 314, 607
Stover, Monteen, 116, 405

badger scam of, 618

and Burns, 386, 393, 397~98

Conley's statement about, 240, 266-67,

3i9>338, 359
on Frank's empty office, 100-101, 115,

227-28,234,338,494
and murder time line, 240, 267, 307, 320,

359»50i
statement of, 100-101, 267

INDEX

741

Straus, Fae, 83

Straus, Nathan, 541, 550, 573, 577

Straus, Nathan, Jr., 462, 541, 550

Stripling, Bessie, 553

Sturdel, Axel, 637

Sturtevant, B. E, 10, 477

Subversive Activities Control Board, 624

Suhr, Lucille Morris, 627

Sullivan, Mark, 491

Sulzberger, Cyrus L., 365

Swanberg, W. A., 38, 39

Swann, Edward, 579

Swanson, George: in lynch gang, 528

Swift Meats, 81

Swiss Alps: Frank in, 371

Taft, William Howard, 105, 347, 477, 516,

574
Tallulah Gorge power plant, 15, 137, 147,

167, 171
Talmadge, Eugene, 158, 618, 620
Tanner, Charles, 94
Tanner, Jonas, 94
Tedder, Carlton, 407
Temple Emanu-El, New York, 365-67
Tennessean, 644
Terrell, Mrs. E C, 48, 53, 62
Terrell, Joseph M., 123
Terry, S.L., 562
Thaw, Harry K., 200, 5 1 2
Thomasville Times-Enterprise, 382
Thompson, Charles Willis, 580, 583,

590-91,594,595
Thompson, Jerry, 644
Thou Shalt Not Kill (film), 535
Thurkield, Wilbur P., 152
Tillman, Ben, 152
Tobie, C. W, 103-4, 1 12, 1 13
Todd, John, 290
Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (Woodward),

384,520
Tom Watson's Magazine, 8
To Number Our Days (Van Paassen),

617-18
Toombs, Robert, 158, 159
Townsend, Deder, 195, 356
Townsend, Uncle Goley, 637, 638
Townsend, J. B., 637, 638
Train, Arthur, 466
Troutman, Robert, 442
Truth About the Frank Case, The

(Connolly), 559
"Truth Is on the March, The" (promotional

slogan), 377-78
Tbcker, W T. and I. V, 404-5

Turner, E J., 561, 585

Turner, Willie, 306-7, 310, 312, 322, 332,

354
Tuttle, Elbert, 614
Tye, John, 421
lye-Peeples Motion, 421, 423, 446-47

Union of American Hebrew Congrega-

tions,348
United Confederate Veterans, 401
United Copper, 105
United States District Court, 455-56, 458,

467
United States Supreme Court, 447, 461
and application for clemency, 482, 493
on First Amendment rights, 614
and Frank's absence from courtroom,

421,451,460,464
in Frank v. Mangum, 463-66, 467
and Georgia Supreme Court, 447,

448-49,464
and public interest, 459, 460
return of mandate from, 471, 472-73
and writ of error, 450-5 1 , 452, 460
and writ of habeas corpus, 455-56,

459
Untermeyer, Samuel, 420
Ursenbach, Charles, 10-1 1, 34, 190, 499,

608-9, 627
Ursenbach, Rosalind Selig, 627

Valencia, Porfirio, 523
Vanderhoef, C. E., 290
Van Paassen, Pierre, 617-18
Vardaman, James, 152
Venable, James, 607, 628
Venable building, 9, 201, 607
Venable family, 607
Voice of the Negro, 123

Walker, Clifford, 605, 615

Wallace, Campbell, Jr., 552-53

Wallace, Fannie Harris, 552-53

Wallace, Mary, 309

Walsh, Thomas J., 445

Ward, Judson, 525

Wardlaw, Lula, 298, 354

Warheit, 573

Warm Springs, Georgia, 609-10

Warner, Pop, 518

Washington, Booker T, 126, 574

Washington Star, 449

Watson, Thomas E.:
anticapitalist writings of, 8, 455
anti-Catholic writings of, 8, 603

742

INDEX

Watson, Thomas E.: (continued)
anti-Semitic writings of, 451-52, 455,
462, 479, 507-8, 541 , 542, 550, 558, 592,
598,599*603,604
Brown and, 520
on child labor, 8, 599
and communism, 613-14
on commutation of sentence, 506-8, 514,

540-41
on Conley as suspect, 542-43
on Creen's attack, 549-50
death of, 615
descendants of, 645
Dorsey and, 613-14
federal indictment of, 8
on film, 558

on Ford's anti-Semitism, 615
on Frank's lynching, 584
Harris and, 552, 603, 604-5, 613
Hearst and, 40
and Hoke Smith's career, 383-84, 520,

613
and Jeffersonian, see Jeffersonian
Ku Klux Klan encouraged by, 605-7, 615
obscenity charge against, 603
opposition to, 599-604
on outsider interference, 393, 397-400,

420-2 1 , 45 1-52, 455, 457, 462, 466-67,

479-80, 481, 541-43, 591, 606
on perversion, 399-400, 418
political career of, 8, 600-601, 613-14,

615

postlynching writings of, 597-601, 603-4

racist opinions of, 541

on "rich criminals," 383-84, 462, 584

statue of, 644

supporters of, 527

uncontrolled, 41

violence threatened by, 439, 467, 480,
487,508,513,538,558,604

on William Smith's second thoughts,
438-39,440-41,542
Weinkauf, Godfrey, 298
West Disinfecting Company, 10, 81
Westerleigh Improvement Society, 632-33
Westmoreland, Willis, 276-77
Wheeler, Polhill, 51 1
Whitaker,Paul,78
White, Arthur, 50, 162, 230, 314
White, Edward D., 459, 464-65
White, Mrs. Arthur, 50, 63, 86, 128, 129, 134,
162, 234-35, 262, 279-80, 288, 314, 337

White, Stanford, 200, 512

Whitfield, L. P., 75-76, 77-78, 1 14, 179-80,

197,407,411,420,453
Wildauer, Benjamin, 342, 375, 486, 499,

559
Wilde, Oscar, 329
Wiley, Louis, 394-95, 419-20, 599
Willingham, Harold, 522
Wilmer, Rev. C. B., 478, 601, 614
Wilson, Woodrow, 347, 467, 52 1 , 606, 609,

613
Wimbush, Ivan, 54-55
Winburn, Fred, 195, 340, 341 , 35 1 , 355-56
Winkle, Estelle, 309
Winter, Rogers, 567, 568, 569, 570-71
Wisbey,F.L., 195

Wise, Rabbi Stephen S., 476, 573, 598
Wiseberg, Ben, 34
Wittenstein, Charles, 617, 645, 648
Wolf, Simon, 348
Wolfsheimer, Carl, 34
Wolfsheimer, Charles, 499
Wolfsheimer, Hennie, 288
Wolfsheimer, Mayer, 1 1
Wollman, William J., 476, 577
Women's Peace Society, 476
Wood, John, 564, 570, 62 1 , 624-25
Wood, Nellie, 89, 308, 389, 405
Wood, Robert A., 54-55
Woodmen of the World, 606
Woodruff, Fuzzy, 212, 243, 258
Woodward, C. Vann, 384, 520, 543
Woodward, James, 56, 58, 97, 106, 154

and commutation of sentence, 503

and Felder episode, 108-9, 112

on lynching, 584

and racial issues, 122
Woodward, Monroe S., 195, 357
Woodwardism, 57, 58
Woolworth,EW.,9
World War 1, 476, 609, 610
World War II, 636
Wrenn, George, 414-15, 417
Wrenn, Jimmy, 406, 407, 412, 413, 416,

420
Wright, Francis E., 68

Yaun, Walter, 565

Yeomans, Manning, 489, 532

Young, Edward, 476

Young, Nell, 640

Young Men's Marching Club, 154